Ascendancy: Darkness of the Cosmos
by OneThousandCuts
Summary: Sequel to The Ascendant. On the run from a mad man turned demi-god, Tifa must confront disturbing changes in herself, and their inevitable conclusion. (Originally published in 2012. Restored and ongoing.)
1. Prologue

_**Disclaimer: I do not own FFVII, nor do I profit from this fan work in any way. This disclaimer applies to all chapters to follow.**_

 **Prologue**

 _One year ago-_

"There was once a beautiful creature, who traveled from world to world. She fed upon each world's lifestream, taking them into herself. At the end of her journey, she planned to return to the center of the universe, where all life could join as one with her in a great reunion. But, she came to one planet that didn't like her plan. They claimed to be the true keepers of life, but they could only defeat her by giving up many of their own. In the end, all the lifestreams she carried were released into that one special planet, and they sealed her away." Eden stopped short, noticing Marlene's struggle to stay awake. It was too bad; there was a lot more to that story.

The psychic numbness lingered still, as two more tears leaked out beyond her awareness, dripping softly onto her hands. "Don't cry, Tifa. You're safe. He has chosen you...even if you can't stand it..." Small hands cupped her face, drying them again. Although the words carried a definite threat, Eden's voice cooed, as if to tempt her into asking more. "His will can endure in your place."


	2. Poetic Justice

**Chapter One: Poetic Justice**

A stranger. From the time Tifa had touched down on this new world, Amyntas, that's all she'd been, and knew that forevermore, in one sense or another, that's all she could ever be. She was the only human being who'd survived the Planet's murder. Tifa did her best not to let her thoughts linger on that day, now a full year past. She was fantastically lucky, she continually reminded herself. Her first encounter with the Amyntasi, humanoids whose apparent differences from humans were incredibly slight, although mutually cautious, had turned into a relationship of care and compassion. The small farming family had taken her in and nursed her back to health, never once questioning whether or not she'd been completely honest with them about who and what she was, or what had happened to Gaia. They'd taken a tremendous risk for her sake.

But as she recovered, her original idea of finding some substantial way to contribute to that poor family in exchange for letting her stay on a permanent basis seemed more and more selfish; ill-thought out at best. There was too much Tifa didn't know about Amyntas as a whole. Would someone in authority punish or harm them if they found out they were harboring her? She had no clue about this world's sociopolitical climate, but she wasn't about to stick around only to find out they were risking execution or worse. Enough-too much-death already lay behind her, and Tifa wasn't willing to chance inviting more bloodshed into anyone's life. So she left them. She thanked them for all they'd done, and set out on a road northward, uncertain of her destination.

Mirnu, Saillyo his wife, and their little daughter, Laiyon: Tifa would never forget them, even if she someday found a reason to wish she could. They'd taught her to speak all over again, helped her through the often-poisonous adventure of learning what she could and couldn't eat here, and comforted and trusted her long before they truly knew each other. Because of them, it was at least remotely possible for her, _an alien_ , to survive and maybe even make some kind of a meaningful living in their world.

Fondly, she remembered that they were planet worshippers, much like the Cetra of Gaia, though they never claimed any special relationship to Amyntas. Saillyo told her that they revered their world because it was the closest life-bearing world to the origin of all, and thereby, the strongest. Learning this, she recalled how both Aerith and Genesis had been fascinated by Minerva's choice to lead her here for refuge, rather than guiding her to complete Omega's purpose as originally planned, which was to return her to the heart of the cosmos to be reborn.

To that end, Tifa also recalled wandering late into the first evening before making camp, and thinking that in some ways, Gaia's soul, the Goddess, was no different from any other living thing. Or, perhaps it was more accurate that all life that had descended from her being shared in her most sincere desire. That desire was not to prosper or find solace, but to survive. Comfort and safety would have led Minerva straight into the "origin of all"; to the Promised Land. But Minerva had chosen Amyntas instead, not quite ready or willing to accept that her true, living form had been destroyed.

For now, Tifa was content to let Minerva use her to extend her life. Once Minerva acknowledged that she'd been defeated and sought to return to the Promised Land, it would mean Tifa's time was up as well. In essence, she felt the same way the Goddess did. She wasn't really ready to be finished with her life, even for all the grim turns and losses they'd both endured. The very idea that one strong-willed man could and did crush the Planet was just still so surreal; too perverse to believe it was absolutely true. There had to be some kind of catch; a saving grace that maybe they were looking too hard to see.

Although Amyntas could never feel like home, the people of this world seemed quite intent on reminding her of Gaia. Her journey had ended early one evening at a surprisingly large, almost out of place metropolis. It towered out of the flatlands like a misplaced mountain. Ground-level columns of stone that looked like marble and quartz composed the buildings, which were then clustered together to form several ascending tiers. Each tier was linked to the others by bridges and stairwells, leading up to the tallest column in the very center. Tifa had been tempted to believe that the city was just one massive structure, until she quietly strode in through the ground-level streets and saw that they were slightly separated by narrow passages and alleyways. Children playing outside of their front doors stared at her in silent curiosity; some of them instantly retreated inside, probably to tell their parents or hide.

What happened afterward was just a small, cosmically-displaced slice of old Midgar life. Tifa didn't get to learn very much about the city that day, because its police force caught up with her-not that she was running-and asked only part of the slew of questions she expected: "Who are you? Where are you from? Are you lost? Do you understand us? Oh, we see...no need to worry. We can take you back to where you belong."

As it turned out, according to them, she was a physically disfigured, mentally-challenged homeless person who'd wandered away from her rightful place in the slums. Her suppler human skin, her unusually accented speech, and lesser number of finger joints didn't exactly seem to drive home the point that she wasn't one of them. Instead, they dismissed her as a terrestrial genetic accident, and escorted her to the western-most edge of town, where a small village comprised mostly of shacks and dug-out homes had sprung up to house the most destitute, along with whatever else this world considered untouchable. Unlike Midgar, the sky was open overhead, but Tifa didn't have to try very hard to conjure up an estimation of how the upper tiers related to the land-crawling poor. They were hardly even welcomed into the city proper, if this experience meant anything. The whole situation, at just a first glance, was sickeningly familiar.

But that was also the day Tifa reaped a tiny speck of hope. She knew how to live in the slums, and how to maneuver within the violent, territorial games without becoming too intimately involved in them. Most importantly, she knew how to acquire a safe niche of neutrality and respect from all sides. In Midgar, that had meant just giving as good as she got, and surrounding herself with people who held a common grudge against ShinRa. Back then, she'd eventually become well known for good, cheap booze and grub, cleavage you didn't have to pay for to admire—but don't you dare touch-and a sound ass-kicking for anyone who needlessly crossed her. And if it turned out a fight was just the result of some stupid misunderstanding? Well, she'd happily be there to help patch up all those bruises and welts she'd earlier dished out. If she was in a good enough mood at the time, she might have even offered her victims a drink on the house...

Living in Midgar's sectored-off slums was often bitter and inglorious, but given something reminiscent of that time and place in her life, and considering everything that had transpired since then, Tifa would gladly accept it.

* * *

Casting off the thin layers of cloth she used for blankets, Tifa rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She'd gone to bed last night the same way she had for the past month since finishing the construction of her tiny, makeshift shack of a house, rehashing how she'd come to live here, and reminding herself why this was better than staying with Mirnu and Saillyo. Then, she'd curled up tight with what she figured had probably once been a really expensive, pristine set of drapes for a balcony window on the upper tiers, and passed out.

Now, it was time to get up and pay her junkie neighbors their petty fee for letting her use their shower. Afterward, she'd wander the streets, looking for more materials to add some kind of plumbing system to her house. That is, if she didn't spend the entire time scouring the dumps for a solid chunk of scrap metal or sturdy stone for her neighbors' sloppy and ever-ongoing second floor construction project, so that she could use their shower again tomorrow. The materials she gave them never seemed to take shape, disappearing quite mysteriously. At first, she hadn't cared. It felt like a good deal to start, but their standards and demands for good materials had been growing increasingly stringent. Tifa tried not to dwell on the fact that she never saw them collecting anything for themselves anymore. She could do without a great deal, but access to running water was not something she was willing to sacrifice.

But first, she needed some kind of breakfast, whether she liked it or not. Tifa grimaced; just thinking about her food choices made her stomach turn. She could hit up the neighbors early, in hopes that they might send her off with a small sack of highly insubstantial grain flakes. On more than one occasion, she thought she'd seen them feeding their pet, whatever that animal was, the same stuff. The other option was to steal away to the garbage dump just outside the uptown border. As much as they'd been on Gaia, the extravagantly wealthy here were fond of pitching food because they'd prepared way, way too much for show. The dumps offered a lot more variety and not always a terrible flavor, if she managed to get there when the refuse was fairly fresh. Otherwise, she risked the filth and life-threatening contamination that were inherent in dumpster diving, not to mention the humiliation.

How funny, that she still found the time and energy to worry about humiliation, after unwittingly helping to cause Gaia's demise, Tifa mused.

 _"But you didn't really,"_ Aerith's voice emerged into the fore of her thoughts.

Sighing, Tifa pushed her friend into the back of her mind. She wasn't in the mood for Aerith's platitudes and pep talks right now, and yes, it was her fault. No measure of consolation, even from Minerva Herself, could change Tifa's mind. _She_ was the one who'd cared for Eden. _She'd_ kept his violent intrusions into her psyche a secret for too long. And ultimately, _she_ was the one who'd sought to save him, even when it had become blatantly obvious that the child's goal was to experience his Reunion and become Sephiroth. All of it she allowed, fully aware that Eden was quite literally a part of Sephiroth; even while her friends and family dropped like flies from Geostigma!

Tifa would be lying to herself if she didn't acknowledge that part of the reason she'd left Mirnu and Saillyo was because of how relentlessly her guilt weighed down on her. Even now that she knew it would probably be safe to return to them, she couldn't. Because some of the Amyntasi authorities had mistaken her for one of their own, albeit mutated or deformed, they'd inadvertently given her the lie she needed to protect the only ones who knew the truth if she chose to go back to them. But she couldn't bring herself to leave the city. The squalor, hunger, and hardship were the least of what Tifa felt she deserved.

Still, it was time to press on as always, and get her day started. There was work to do, scraps to collect, and a myriad of foul city odors to ignore. "The slums reek" seemed to be some kind of sacred universal law. Finally gathering the will to rise from her dingy sleeping mat, Tifa wafted the cheesy, salty, oniony stench radiating from her armpits and feet. A light breeze forced itself into her shack through the cracks in the scrap-metal walls, bringing with it the stale, bile-ridden musk of raw sewage. Home sweet and sour, pungent home.

For what little it was worth, Tifa brushed herself off, killed whatever insects crept between her and the front door, and headed over to the neighbor's house. Vaniir and the woman Tifa had thus far presumed to be his girlfriend, Neyli, were outside waiting for her as usual.

"Ah, Tifa! I see you've been working quite hard," Vaniir greeted her, motioning to the rust-free pile of metal sheets she'd left at their doorstep. "Come inside; bathe. Today, I have a special project for you!"

"What might that be?" Tifa replied evenly, clenching one fist at her side in frustration, while coming to the same realization she made on an almost daily basis about this man: She hated him!

Despite his professionally-built home and running water, Vaniir's hygiene was probably worse than her own. His ear-length black hair was always matted down with what looked like weeks' worth of grease, and he clearly made no effort whatsoever to clean his teeth. There was somehow always a field of stubble taking over his face, and sleep crusts in the corners of his dim, pea-green eyes. And that was just his appearance! Vaniir's frail, willowy girlfriend, Neyli, almost never said a word to him, and always kept her gaze low to the ground when Tifa came over. Vaniir seemed to relish in how badly he intimidated her, particularly if anyone else was around, like he had something to prove.

Poor Neyli had the demeanor of a cruelly-trained animal. She had gorgeous, light blonde hair that might have been able to tame itself, but the constant stress she was under made her tousle and pull at it, rendering it uneven and frizzy. Her light gray eyes were sunken in and eternally recovering from her most recent bout of crying. And she was tiny; malnourished. Whereas Vaniir was tubby and over-fed, Neyli was little more than a scarred and bruised skeleton. Tifa predicted that one day, she'd probably snap and turn on Vaniir, but until then, she was faithfully and fearfully obedient to the asshole's every whim. That was certainly one list of evils Tifa wanted to know nothing about.

Yet, it was Neyli who'd first offered her a hot shower and a few jugs of drinking water. That was the same day Tifa had started handing over portions of the scrap she'd gleaned as payment. Although Neyli was only trying to be charitable, Tifa feared how the then-intoxicated and enraged Vaniir might punish her for it. The last thing she wanted was for Neyli to garner even more of Vaniir's negative attention if and when the man became violent. Compensating him for the meager gift of water worked well to keep his temper in check.

"Well, you see...today, you're not going to waste any more time scavenging for pipes and scrap metal. It's going to be getting cold soon, so today, I need you go about a mile or two north of the city. You'll find some stampeding flocks of plains-birds. They're a handful, but I need you to take down a few of them, and bring me their feathers. Who knows? Bring back enough, and I might not need them all..."

Neyli cowered closer to him, and feigned approval, "Yes. That is a good idea. Perhaps...if she brings enough, Tifa can keep a share for her home?"

Vaniir rolled his eyes, lightly slapped the back of her head, and grabbed her arm. "Stupid, stupid Neyli. You never think, do you? You have to try to _think!_ We're going to sell the extras for food and our other expenses. If your pet freak needs anything more from us, she needs to give _me-me, not you-_ a good reason why I should."

"But...!" Neyli started, but Vaniir tightened his hold on her arm, causing a joint to pop. Wincing, she crouched slightly, her eyes rapidly batting back tears while she covered her mouth. "Of course. I-I should have thought just a little harder about it...sorry, sorry, sorry..."

Tifa cast a death-glare his way. Oh, how she'd love to rip his head from his shoulders, and present it to Neyli on a sharpened pike. "That's not necessary. You'll have what you need before sundown, Vaniir," she muttered.

She stomped into their house, strode down a long hallway to the bathroom, and closed the door behind her. Tearing off her grime- covered top, she frowned. Since when had she accepted formal employment, if that's even what she could call it, from Vaniir?

 _"Hey! How about, 'Since when do I let dirt-bags walk all over helpless people?!'"_ Yuffie interjected. _"I remember how you used to 'reform' tons of his kind back in Seventh Heaven with just one or two good ass-beatings! What gives, Tifa?"_

"This isn't our world, Yuffie," Tifa mumbled. She'd long since learned to act like she was only talking to herself when responding to her friends. "Besides, the last time I stepped in for someone who was 'helpless'..."

 _"In hindsight, was Eden really that helpless, Tifa? And what about all the times you were there for me?"_ Cloud broke in.

"But I knew you for a long time, Cloud. Please, I don't want to think about this," Tifa replied, and her friends graciously fell silent.

She would do what she needed to do to get by; what she always did since coming to this city. Before returning to Vaniir with his demands, she'd find a place to hide a small stash of feathers for herself. When night fell, she'd retrieve it, and smuggle it into her dinky shack.

Finally relaxing under a scalding spray, Tifa scraped her nails along her scalp and vigorously scrubbed her skin. The Amyntasi's skin was thicker and tougher, so she had to use her bare hands. What passed for a decent body sponge to these people would probably leave her raw with scrapes and scratches all over the place. Breathing in the hot, steamy air, Tifa decided that Yuffie was wrong. Roughing up her most despicable patrons had never taught them anything but not to frequent a bar tended and managed by a strong fighting woman. No, the only time she'd ever encountered one of those bastards who'd truly seen the light was when his body was riddled with Geostigma. Sadly, some people just never appreciated their lives until death became their drinking buddy.

Too bad she couldn't give Vaniir a taste of _that_ medicine.

"Tifa! Time's up! Get the fuck out of my house, and get to work!" Vaniir shouted through the locked door.

Something had to have pissed him off for him to drop his faux professional gentleman act so completely. Down the hall, she could make out Neyli's muffled whimpering. Tifa sighed through her teeth, knowing that she'd probably tried one more time to convince Vaniir to show an ounce of compassion. Unsurprisingly, the prick didn't have so much as a single kind word for either of them.

Too bad, indeed. Vaniir deserved to watch his own body melt away.

* * *

For the first time in a month, Tifa ventured outside of the city limits. Looking up at its towering columns and artificial, mesa-like tiers, she marveled at how, despite having all the flaws of Midgar's slums, the place as a whole looked like a colossal temple. Cluster 100, the Amyntasi called it, or so she'd heard. Supposedly, they didn't name their cities. In a way, the government managed the whole world just like ShinRa, designating numbered sectors rather than meaningful or historical names.

Other than that and slum life, Tifa hadn't had the time to learn much more. For now, just getting by was a full-time job.

She welcomed the cleanliness of the flatlands, and the beauty of two of Amyntas' three moons, hanging low in the mid-morning sky. It was the same scenery she'd grown comfortable with while living under Mirnu and Saillyo's roof. And for once, the wind didn't make her want to hold her breath, carrying only benign, grassy scents. If Tifa really wanted to, she could walk away from Cluster 100, and never look back. Maybe she could find a smaller town somewhere? Tifa moaned, remembering all too quickly the advantage of the slums. In such an ugly and perverse place, it wasn't difficult at all to sell people on the story that she was deformed, but still one of their own. Considering how put-off the average Cluster citizens had been at her mere appearance, Tifa feared that not only would she stand out more where it was less populated, but that her cover would be blown, and that by association, her original hosts would be in danger.

Besides, even if throttling Vaniir was more or less out of the question, Neyli needed a friend. Maybe, in time, the knowledge that she wasn't alone anymore would push the woman to stand up for herself. Tifa snorted, incredulous of those thoughts, ready to argue with herself. She might be embittered, ashamed, traumatized, and who knew what else, but she was still the same person she'd always been. Long before Neyli could ever hope to gather the courage, Tifa would probably act for her. Vaniir was walking on dangerously thin ice; Tifa wasn't going to remain conflicted forever. Whatever happened to her in consequence was negligible when compared to the needs of an innocent-a true innocent, if such a person existed. At any rate, Neyli wasn't malicious, and she needed help.

Nevertheless, Tifa still banked her hopes on Vaniir's grotesque lifestyle. If she and Neyli were lucky, the man would finish himself off before their respective situations with him degraded any further.

Forcing her dysfunctional neighbors out of her mind, Tifa set out toward the north, to find these so-called "stampeding plains-birds". The only kind of bird she'd ever seen flocking together _and_ stampeding were wild chocobos. If these plains-birds were anything like chocobos, they were worth a lot more to her than their feathers. They might also be edible, and good as swift transports. Walking everywhere was getting very, very old. Now that she came to think of it, the Amyntasi were oddly immobile, from what she'd seen so far. It didn't make any sense. Everywhere she'd roamed, her encounters with monsters and other predators had been incredibly rare.

 _"It appears that the Amyntasi do not cannibalize their world. The grasses are lush, even at the city's edge. Perhaps there are restrictions on moving to prevent damaging the land?"_ Nanaki suggested.

"That's a nice thought, but I'm not so sure," Tifa responded, settling into a normal conversation. Alone, she didn't have to worry about who might see her and question why she was talking to apparently no one. "I don't like how some people are treated here. I don't really know enough, but it reminds me a little of how the ShinRa was."

 _"It is...odd,"_ Nanaki agreed. For a moment, Tifa could feel him hesitating. _"Tifa, what do you intend to do with that ghastly Vaniir?"_

Groaning, Tifa stopped, and scuffed her shoes against the unpaved road, sending up a small spray of gravel. "As little as I need to, I guess. I want to help Neyli, but Vaniir's going to have to give me no other choice. This world scares me enough, Nanaki. I'm not in a rush to find out what their prison system is like."

 _"Unfortunate, but fair enough,"_ Nanaki acquiesced, and receded into her subconscious.

Ahead, Tifa heard a low rumble. The pebbles at her feet hopped and trembled. Shielding her eyes from the sun's glare with one hand, she tried to peer further into the distance. Behind a smoky wall of dust, she caught a glimpse of beaked faces with long, sandy brown, feathered necks craning forward, charging at full speed.

"Uh...I don't think this is going to work!" Tifa sang to herself, while quickly veering to one side, moving out of their way.

There was no way she was going to be able to get within ten feet of one of those animals, let alone trying to topple one or more of them for their feathers! Maybe they looked and acted enough like chocobos, but these birds were monstrous! An average Gaian chocobo was about a foot or two taller than her; these creatures were two and three times her height! If they socialized more like chocobos, and didn't run with tens and hundreds of companions, Tifa might have stood a chance of hunting and killing one, but the very-rightly named stampeding plains-birds' defense was nigh unbreakable. Why bother stalking one, when they were all tall enough to see her coming from most directions, and would probably crush her underfoot the moment she tried to leap? She estimated that only an elephant gun could hope to bring these guys down, and that the shot would have to come from a distance to avoid being trampled when the blast spooked all the others. But it was a moot point, because her know-how with any guns was next to nothing, let alone trying to shoot down big game properly. Where in this world could she even get a hold of such a weapon?

Tifa scowled. She was going to have to return to Vaniir empty-handed. The filthy man probably knew damn well what these birds were like. For all she knew, sending her into their path was a lazy effort on his part to get rid of her. If she'd been caught in the stampede, would anyone have really questioned it? "Have you heard? Some mentally-deficient wench from the slums wandered out, and died in a run-in with the plains-birds. Too bad, so sad. No one really knew her..." Yes, whoever was in charge of investigating her death, if anyone aside from Vaniir and Neyli took note, would probably say something like that.

 _"Shit, Tifa!_ _If that ain't one fucked up way to look at it, "_ Cid protested.

Bowing her head, Tifa conceded, "Yeah, it is. But...it's probably the truth. I don't know if I can afford to believe anything else-not until I'm doing more than just scraping by."

* * *

After a full day of circling the city aimlessly, Tifa crept back into the Cluster under the cover of darkness. Only one of Amyntas' three moons was up, granting her a few more reliable shadows to mask her return. Because she had nothing to give him, she had decided to wait until it was late enough for Vaniir to have gone comatose from whatever illicit plant, animal, or drink he'd chosen to imbibe this time. A red, slimy, globular moss that grew in sewers was his favorite. Supposedly, it brought on strong hallucinations, followed by a sound, deep sleep. Tifa hoped he was in the mood for it this evening. Regretfully, Neyli sometimes joined him, but it was probably best that they both be asleep when she arrived.

Heeding extra caution, Tifa decided to wait a little longer before returning to her shack. Until then, she skulked around one of the slums' landfills, quietly picking through constructive wastes for anything she might use. Granted, night was the worst time to do this. She couldn't always make out where the sharp, rusty edges and broken glass were. Still, it was preferable to coming here when Vaniir was expecting her to hand over anything good. The sooner she gathered enough supplies to connect her pathetic little tin shed of a home to the city's sewers and aqueducts, the sooner she could stop pretending she was that bastard's slave. She'd already managed to find a suitable tub and sink. They were more like a huge metal barrel and a dented bucket, but they were water-tight and sturdy.

When a dull ache began to throb behind her eyes and in her temples, Tifa surmised that searching with almost no light and breathing in the dumps' vile stench were starting to get to her. Only somewhat irrationally, she found herself blaming it on Vaniir. When was the last time she'd come to hate another person so quickly? Tifa's breath caught in her throat for the obvious answer, and she nearly choked on it. That was the wrong question to ask; the wrong comparison to draw, but it was too late. Her heart was already racing, and her eyes were already straining against the flood of tears she held in reserve for that one memory. Thoughts like this always came out of nowhere, and there was never a way to prepare for how they'd get to her.

"I don't want to think about it, I don't want to know it," Tifa chanted through her teeth, trying desperately to soothe herself.

Anything, anything, she would give to push thoughts of that one away. It was one thing when she recalled his name of her own free will, but when something coincidentally reminded her like this, she could barely handle it. Mercifully, the tension in her head worsened, distracting her. The pain was damn near nauseating, but it was a price she was more than willing to pay. Feeling so ill meant she had more of a reason to go home than she did to keep working. Cocooning with her ripped up curtains and salty-smelling bedroll was suddenly quite appealing.

She'd only found a few solid pipes, but they were better than nothing; they still meant she'd made progress. Cradling them against her chest, Tifa jogged the few blocks between the landfill and her shack. As she drew near, she slowed to a tip-toe, not allowing Vaniir and Neyli's house to leave her line of sight. Their lights were all off, but that didn't necessarily mean she was in the clear. Depending on what drug they'd taken, they could be lounging in the pitch dark, wide awake and enjoying-or suffering from-a massive trip that the absence of light greatly intensified.

 _"My friend, the fates are cruel,"_ Genesis whispered abruptly; harshly.

Closing in on her front door, Tifa narrowed her eyes, searching for what had prompted Genesis' sudden recital. Then, only inched away from the entrance, her foot met with a limp, heavy, unyielding resistance. The unexpected barricade made Tifa fumble the treasures she'd gathered from the dump, and they slipped from her slick, sweaty hands, clattering to the sidewalk. Shaking, she knelt down, fixated on the two bodies, which were heaped one on top of the other. Dark, black and ash-colored inflammations coated their arms, chests, and legs. Oily slime still seeped from Vaniir's mouth, and out of Neyli's ears. Their eyes were stuck wide open, preserving the shock in which they'd perished.

From their expressions, she could tell they hadn't seen or felt it coming—it had just emerged from within their bodies suddenly, and killed.

Tifa began to hyperventilate, panicked. Blocking her door-two Geostigma victims, her neighbors, were blocking her door. Why did they have to do _this_? They didn't, really. She would get Vaniir whatever he needed. Didn't he understand that by now? He didn't need to pull something like this. And Neyli-Of course Tifa was planning on helping her! She was! Wasn't this kind of cry for help a little extreme? But, they were dead, and they were blocking her door, bleeding out black ooze, while all Tifa wanted was to go in and rest, and stop, stop, _stop_ thinking about it!

Between her pounding, burning head and corpses at her feet, she couldn't hold back anymore. Tifa turned away and vomited.


	3. Denial

**Chapter Two: Denial**

Playing the final act of a murderer, Tifa buried Neyli and Vaniir in a shallow grave she'd spent most of the night digging within the walls of her own shack. When the ground inside was as smooth and untouched as she could force it to appear, she loaded her one-roomed home with all of her gleaned building supplies and topped it off with random garbage until the pile nearly touched the ceiling. Finally, she pulled sheets of metal down from the walls outside, making it look like nothing more than another common trash heap. She would no longer need that tiny place that barely shielded her from the elements. As long as she could ignore how her neighbors had died, or that they'd died at all, their house was as good as hers.

As she worked, Tifa devised a little tale she could tell herself every time she thought of them: Vaniir and Neyli were away, taking care of whatever unclean business Vaniir had concocted this time. In an unexpectedly gracious, likely drug-influenced move, they'd allowed her to watch their house. No, she had no clue when they'd be back, and neither did they, but until then, she'd be more than happy to keep the place clean, and take care of their pet-something. What in the world was that thing? It looked absolutely nothing like any creature or mutant she'd seen on Gaia.

"Well, hopefully they're not gone for too long," Tifa quietly complained to herself, affirming her lie. "I still have a lot of work to do. I've been so busy, and my house is a disaster area."

 _"...At least it will be more comfortable,"_ Cloud agreed.

Tifa exhaled in relief. She hadn't heard from her friends since last night, when she'd found-that is, since Neyli and Vaniir had departed, and she'd found the keys to their house in her hands. For a little while, she'd have uninhibited access to food, water, and a clean place to sleep. Or at least, it would be clean once she found the time to straighten the place up. Vaniir had always been such a slob. But she wouldn't get rained on through a leaky ceiling or wake up to find some disgusting, unidentified insect crawling in her hair or creeping down through her clothes. Perhaps her friends were simply shocked that her luck had turned for the better so suddenly? Tifa couldn't say she blamed them for not knowing what to say. Things were seriously looking up, weren't they?

Smiling and gently humming to herself, Tifa unlocked her neighbors' front door, and slipped inside. A solid floor, similar to laminate, clicked beneath her feet with each step, a welcomed change to her usual, bare-earth accommodations. Before her, the trash-laden living room offered one acceptably clean spot: a soft, plush couch just perfect for napping on. The mere sight of it made Tifa release a monster yawn so forceful her jaw cracked.

"Oh, goodnight," she mumbled to no one.

But there was a problem. Someone had beat her to it. The room was filled with smoke or haze, and someone was lounging right where she intended to fall comatose. He was brazen as ever, sitting carelessly, stretched out and enjoying the very spot she so desperately needed. Genesis always barged in like this, though, startling her to make sure he had her attention. Some day in the very distant future, she might learn to ignore him, or so she could only pray.

Taking a step back, Tifa steadied herself against the wall behind her. Genesis, Cloud, and the others only ever interfered so directly with her daily life when she was either about to take too great of a risk, or when, sadly, she was beginning to crack under the stress of all she'd endured. Genesis was particularly intolerant of her more severe mental slip-ups. The lie she'd just chosen to believe in was still so fresh, his arrival made her strain against compulsively recalling what had really happened.

Languidly, Genesis flipped a page in the hard-bound copy of LOVELESS he always carried, pretending to ignore her.

Tifa sighed and crossed her arms, waiting for him to say his piece. It just wasn't Genesis unless he made some kind of entrance, or put on his obligatory melodramatic act. His intros were very effective, though; they had an annoying way of completely disarming and distracting her from whatever charade she was trying to keep up.

At last, he closed the book and peered up at her. Gesturing around the room with one hand, he commented, "Was there not a parasitic couple taking up residence here only last night? As I recall, you'd been quite adamant about avoiding them. Remind me again, Tifa: Where have Neyli and Vaniir gone?"

Squirming inside, Tifa bowed her head to avoid Genesis' piercing glare, intent on breathing life into the new reality she'd chosen. "They...they ran into me last night when I got back. Actually, it was more like I ran into them, just outside my door. That's when they gave me their keys. They didn't really say how long they'd be gone or even where they were going, but I kind of got the feeling it would be a while. I can only hope they don't get wrapped up in anything too reckless, but knowing them…I guess I just have to do my best to take care of things for them in the meantime."

"How fascinating they couldn't share their destination. Are you certain they didn't?" Genesis pushed.

"I don't know where they went!" Tifa insisted, a panicky edge creeping into her voice. If there was one thing she couldn't bear right now, and one thing she didn't have the patience for, it was having to face a surprise interrogation by someone who wasn't going anywhere until he got the answers he wanted.

Genesis stood, and paced to peer out the window. Dim light seeped through the curtains when he pushed them aside, briefly brightening the whole room. "Fair enough, I suppose. I have to wonder why you chose not to sleep last night, however. Between your unsuccessful hunting journey outside the Cluster and your late-night scavenging, you should have been exhausted, no?"

"...I am, actually. Before you showed up, I was heading to bed. Now, it looks like I'm going to have to waste the whole day sleeping. We can talk about it later," Tifa tried, mustering the most put- off tone she could.

Genesis smirked, and peered almost playfully out of the one eye his bangs didn't veil. "Allow us both a more accurate account of what happened, and I'll gladly take my leave."

Tifa lowered herself to the floor, and held her head in her hands. What really happened? She'd already decided she wasn't going there. Pretending not to remember much of what had transpired on Gaia most of the time is what made it possible for her to live her day-in, day-out life without totally losing her mind. Why didn't Genesis understand that? Last night's true events had brought every accursed detail back, right up until she'd finished burying the evidence, and simply decided that no such thing had occurred. To change her mind-no. Just no. She couldn't handle it. She wouldn't.

A wistful half-smile later, she answered him, "I'm sorry, Genesis, but I don't really remember anything. I'm not so sure I want to, either."

"But you will, eventually, and whoever serves to remind you may not respect your wishes as we have thus far," Genesis pointedly warned.

"'Thus far?' What's that supposed to mean?"

"You are a vessel for the Goddess, Tifa. Your very life has become a dangerous anomaly that only she can support. If it is not in her best interest for you to continue supplanting the truth, then you won't."

Tifa felt her pulse double, and her stomach clenched painfully. A thick shadow covered the room, and in it, she beheld the Goddess of Gaia for the first time in over a year. Minerva had changed. Gone were her torn clothes, scars, and bent armor. In their place, she wore only her tiara and a simple white dress, lined and plated with cerulean and gold trim. Soft, aquamarine wisps of Gaia's remaining clean Lifestream flowed around her, and Tifa thought she could hear the sound of her friends' conversing voices drifting within them. But most ominous was the gargantuan bow the Goddess clutched her right hand, composed entirely of her former combat gear. And in her left, what Tifa had once thought was some kind of holy staff, she now understood was its arrow.

The Goddess was fully prepared to rain down her wrath on whosoever she would, and although it made little sense, Tifa was tempted to believe that she was the next target. But all she received was a subtle nod of Minvera's head, judging Genesis' words true, and a small voice that she felt more than heard, repeating, _"The doors must remain open henceforth…the doors must remain open…"_

In that instant, the events of the previous night flooded back into Tifa's consciousness with sharp and merciless clarity. Vaniir and Neyli had died sudden, violent, and all-too-familiar Geostigma deaths, the implications of which were grim at best. Geostigma was a Gaian problem to the best of Tifa's knowledge, and here she was, clandestinely carrying the last of her world's souls and its deity. The only ones that had contracted the illness were people on whom she'd actually _wished it._ Not that she'd really wished anything upon Neyli aside from escape, but it was too easy to write her off as a casualty of bad karma or some force like it.

"She's not a host, is she?" Tifa asked Genesis, slowly recovering from her vision, unable to staunch a few long-held tears. "Am I?"

What if Sephiroth had only allowed her to escape because either she or the Goddess carried some kind of dormant variety of his Geostigma virus?

"No, but this world may have its own lingering rot. As self-proclaimed defender of the Promised Land, Amyntas may have encountered Jenova long before she came to Gaia. Not to offend, but I should think that Sephiroth's presence would be stronger felt than two inconsequential slum rats laying dead at their neighbor's door."

Inconsequential-Tifa had no problem thinking of Vaniir that way, but not Neyli. Neyli had helped her survive in this strange place, and to her own harm. Yet, she understood what Genesis was implying. To Sephiroth, just those two strangers would mean practically nothing. He would have gone much, much further.

Unless he was hell-bent on communicating something specifically to her.

Tifa shook her head, trying to rid herself of that idea. It was ridiculous! What could such a message possibly be? _'Your most foul wish is my command?'_ There was no point in that. If he found her, he probably wouldn't spare a moment for trivial mind games this time around. She was certain that Sephiroth's prime target at this point would have to be Minerva. If he acted on any kind of sound logic, he'd just go in for the kill and take what he believed was destined to become his all along. After that, with his deification complete, all he'd have left to accomplish would be a quick interstellar walk to the Promised Land. Why waste time toying with her?

"I need to be more careful what I wish for, huh?" Tifa said.

"To the contrary, I'd pay much less attention to petty coincidences, and more to the world you're in. You can't truly believe that not a single one of these people suspects your true origins. Human they may not be, but their nature is very much the same. With death literally on your doorstep, you'd make an easy scapegoat for anyone who wishes to strike at the unfamiliar to maintain a false sense of security," Genesis explained.

"But-!" Tifa started to argue, but he was gone. She groaned and yawned, finally flopping down onto the couch. "Just come and go whenever you want, Genesis! So long as you have the last word, right?"

She wasn't buying into Genesis' theory that her neighbors' Geostigma deaths were just some kind of ironic coincidence. Even if Jenova had touched Amyntas once upon a time, that would have been over two thousand years ago! For Geostigma to surface right here and now, when she was around, and right when she'd foolishly wished for it just felt too calculated. Someone had to have made it happen, and the options for the culprit's identity were rather limited. The only way not blaming anyone specific could make sense was if the virus had evolved into some kind of intelligence on its own, or more likely, had copied from other life forms around it. That was more or less how Jenova worked, wasn't it? Whether physiologically or psychologically, even the smallest cellular components of Jenova's being could mimic whatever they needed to for survival's sake.

Curling up tightly into herself, Tifa had a sudden realization: No matter how small, basic, or disparate, anything that had once been part of Jenova followed one driving force alone- "Reunion...Oh no..."

If Genesis was correct, and Amyntas had indeed suffered an ancient run-in with Jenova, then either the creature herself, or more likely, the man who carried on her legacy, would certainly feel drawn to this planet.

Amyntas was not a place of refuge. Quite possibly, it was a glaring beacon in the darkness of space for Sephiroth to come and ravage. If he harnessed the Jenova plague that apparently still lingered here, this world could fall to him as well. What if his proximity to Amyntas was close enough that it triggered the virus to awaken? The way Neyli and Vaniir had died-It was meant for her to see. If not, they would have died in bed or on their front porch; not on her front doorstep in a neat pile! Tifa was certain of that now, even if the virus was only copying from Sephiroth's past memories and motives of constantly targeting those around her.

Tifa trembled, and buried her face into the arm of the couch, letting it soak up her damp, uneven breaths.

 _"Tifa, we don't know for sure yet,"_ Cloud gently whispered in the back of her mind. He continued to speak, trying to soothe her, but to no avail. She could hear him, but her mind was too loud to make out the rest of his words.

She settled on doing the only thing she could for now, and wept herself to sleep.

* * *

Tifa didn't wake up until late evening, and for the most part, she was relieved to have slept the day away. Night was quiet, and blissfully devoid of small children, teen-aged delinquents, and old ladies; in other words, the typical snoops and shameless point-and-starers. Usually, she didn't take it very personally, but after entombing her neighbors in her old makeshift house and being forced to undergo a nerve-wracking epiphany about how safe this world wasn't, she was happy to do without the normal gawking-fest.

What she did have to cope with right away was waking up to find that Vaniir and Neyli's former pet had curled up on her stomach and drooled generously while they both slept. The translucent goop was thin enough that Tifa was able to flick most of it off with a swipe of her palm, but she'd have to scrub the remaining stickiness.

"Ugh, nice to see you too," Tifa groaned at the still-unidentified creature. "What are you, anyway?"

Tifa wracked her brain, trying to remember the name or word she'd heard Neyli call a few times, to which the animal seemed to respond. Peylo? Palla? Palylio! That was it!

Palylio, for lack of a better way to think of it, looked to her like a toy-maker's disastrous accident with left over plush parts that had somehow come to life. It had a dog-like face, complete with a long snout, but the tubular body of a medium snake. Yet, even Palylio's long torso managed to grow a luxuriously soft, forest green fur coat. How the thing was so agile with a mismatched body like that, Tifa could only guess. She supposed the creature was still sort of cute, in an acquired taste sense of the word.

"At least I already have a pretty good idea of what to feed you, Palylio," Tifa announced with a grimace. She'd probably already tasted some of it for herself. "Never saw you outside with Neyli, so you probably have a litter box or something like that around here…But, let's get some air first."

Distracting her mind from the distress she'd fallen asleep with was fast proving futile. The living room felt like it was contracting; the walls closing in on her with every half-held breath. Hurriedly, Tifa escaped to the kitchen, and scanned the ceiling for the small hatch that Vaniir had installed. He'd claimed that's where he was going to build the stairs when he finished the second story, but he'd never really gotten started on any construction. The small step-ladder that he and Neyli had used to access their roof was still there, though.

Tifa wasted no time in hopping up, and throwing the hatch open. While it would have been quicker simply to use the front door, just going outside wasn't enough. She wanted to be elevated, where she could keep watch for anything and everything, just like the plains birds she'd seen yesterday.

On the roof, she basked in the cool dusk air. The slums' normal rancid odors had settled to a mere undertone by now, so she indulged in a deep breath. Aside from Vaniir and Neyli's suspicious deaths, what did she really have to go on? What did she really know? Jumping at every frightening thought or menacing shadow was getting her nowhere really fast. At best, she'd wind up validating some of the Amyntasis' suspicion that she was mentally ill or deficient after all. She didn't need her cover to be that secure.

The universe was a huge place, Tifa reminded herself. Jenova was outright ancient, having possibly visited and scarred numerous worlds over several millennia. If each one she hadn't ended still possessed some piece of her, how many worlds would Sephiroth have to absorb before he came for Amyntas?

"How long before he comes for me?" Tifa finally let herself ask, because she knew he would. Minerva was within her, so his coming was unavoidable.

Inside, her friends were perfectly still and silent, but Tifa could feel them watching her, waiting to see how completely she'd be able to embrace the grim details of her reality. They'd all been incredibly patient with her. Even Genesis, with his brash and often uncouth ways of stepping in to hog-tie her to her own sanity, had been gentle with her when it came to the full scope of the truth. He'd never let her deny what was right in front of her, but he'd given her some rational ways to side-step dealing with the sum of her circumstances all at once. Although he'd presented it as a reason why Sephiroth probably wasn't directly responsible for Vaniir and Neyli's fatal Geostigma, without Genesis' revelation that Amyntas might have battled Jenova long ago, she would have been a lot less receptive to believing that he was probably en route.

Of course, Cloud had always been there too. He usually appeared when the loneliness of knowing that she was the last human being alive became too oppressive. Or, more appropriately, when having no living friends or family she could safely count on became too depressing. Sometimes, his visits turned counter-productive. Any time she wanted to hold him left Tifa with a stark reminder that although Cloud was alive in the sense of being conscious, his body had long ago perished. He and all of her friends were just ghosts, separate from Minerva as individuals strictly to uphold her morale and stability as the Goddess' vessel.

Why didn't Minerva continue to the Promised Land? Tifa exhaled very slowly, and sat down on the concrete roof before admitting her next thought, "It's not like I can ever enjoy my life again. Not even surviving really seems worth it."

No, she wasn't suicidal; it was more like she was resigned. Tifa felt she still had enough willpower to keep living, but if Minerva decided that today was the day they'd head into the heart of the universe and dissolve into the Promised Land, she was ready. It was the best death she could possibly hope for, and even something of a privilege for someone who was only a shoddy surrogate for Omega, not to mention partially responsible for her world's demise.

" _We're still here because the Goddess' work isn't finished yet, Tifa. As long as Sephiroth is still out there, our home isn't safe. If he steals the spirit energy from enough worlds, he can conquer the Promised Land too,"_ Aerith finally explained.

Tifa's mouth dropped slightly. Her initial assumptions about the Goddess' motivations had been completely off base. None of this had ever been about survival. Minerva actually meant to make it her—no, their—mission to protect the source of all life. The Goddess that Sephiroth had so handily defeated came to Amyntas not to hide, but to heal and regroup so she could take him on again! Minerva's world was little more than a memory, but she still intended to fight.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Tifa cried out.

Passing by on the street below, a stumbling drunkard mocked her sudden outburst in a slurred falsetto, "'You'ff got to be kidding me!' Ha ha! Nope, not kidding at all, ya dumb bitch, an' I got two more bottles here to prove it…hic!"

Tifa rolled her eyes and groaned. Yet another universal truth was that no matter the planet or species, lone male drunkards down on their luck were frequently misogynistic attention whores. Thus, the man below was naturally very protective of his booze. Ironically, his announcement that he had two could just as easily be a harsh offer. Right now, Tifa wasn't entirely opposed to the idea of a strong drink to take the edge off.

"Oh yeah? Why don't you throw one up here? I could use some convincing!" she hollered back.

The lush howled at her absurd suggestion, and made a lewd gesture, bending and flexing the fourth joint of his index finger—the Amyntasi equivalent of flipping someone off.

"Yeah, no thanks," Tifa recoiled, and the man continued onward in his stumbling path, still cackling.

Just as he regained enough of his bearings to walk in something resembling a straight line, gunfire ricocheted off the building two doors down the road, jolting him into a sprint that failed miserably after four or five yards. Face planted on the sidewalk, the drunk's two bottles rolled out of his pants. One of them burst, spilling out into the street, unleashing a slew of expletives from its former owner.

"Heheh! Looks like he only got one, Teef!"

At the sound of that voice, Tifa's intoxicated visitor quickly faded into the background of her awareness. Looking up from the pathetic sight, she saw that everything else matched. His bulky build, his dark and grizzled face, his signature gun arm—there was no mistaking who had just appeared across the street. She knew she shouldn't accept him without question. There were too many reasons why he shouldn't be there, but she'd been essentially alone for over a year.

"Barret!"

Vaulting over the edge of the roof, Tifa barely managed to keep her footing when she landed. But that didn't stop her from running to meet Barret, and tackling him in a merciless bear hug.

After an awkward split second, he reciprocated, tossing his good arm around her shoulders. "Musta been a long time," he chuckled.

"You could say that," Tifa carefully affirmed, stepping back. She would have to bring it up eventually, but there was just no right way to ask, 'Why aren't you dead like I thought?' For now, she settled on, "Why don't you come inside? I was just about to make dinner, and we a have _a lot_ of catching up to do," instead.

* * *

For as unkempt some parts of their house were, Tifa was relieved to find nothing with legs or antennae while she rummaged through Neyli and Vaniir's kitchen. Without any nasty surprises, it was much easier to pretend she was simply looking for ingredients and making decisions. In reality, she didn't have the foggiest clue where everything was, if they even had what she needed, and if enough of it was edible for her to prepare. Letting Barret in on the complexity of her situation right away felt too risky. She needed to figure out what was up with him first.

How had he made it all the way here, to Amyntas? How had he even known where to go? Why hadn't his Geostigma killed him and forced him to join with Sephiroth's Lifestream like it had done to everyone else?

Tifa inspected Barret through the corner of her eye. The spot on his arm that should have been infected, gangrenous, and melting was now perfectly clean. While much of his spontaneity and vigor remained, some of the basic idiosyncrasies of his personality and the person she once knew only appeared as if by prompt. When the passing drunk had insulted her, he was quick to jump to her assistance, much like he used to back in her first Seventh Heaven bar in Midgar, before he understood she was a fighter as well. But now that he'd found a comfortable seat at the kitchen table, he was quiet. The Barret she knew always had something to say, even if only in the form of cranky grumbling or sleep-talking the whole house could hear. Tifa fondly recalled how they had to postpone one or two AVALANCHE scouting operations because of it. No one ever slept too well when Barret was on edge.

Yet, the man behind her had nothing to share, even after a full year apart. He was completely content with blankly staring at his reflection in the metal surface of his gun arm. His entire personality just seemed off.

Pursing her lips, Tifa returned to the task before her. It wasn't like she hadn't seen this kind of thing before. Years ago, when she'd first run into Cloud at the train station in Midgar, he was the same—only able to act like his real self or something passing for it when someone prompted or reminded him. And of course, that was all Jenova's doing; something which Sephiroth used to exploit Cloud. It wasn't all bad news, though. Maybe, just maybe, Barret's Geostigma had run its course, and his head was still a bit scrambled from the recovery process? If anyone was strong and stubborn enough to pull off an unaided, one-man fight with the same sickness that ruined Gaia, Barret would have to be that person.

What was it he used to say? _'There ain't no gettin' offa this train we on!'_

" _Sounds about right to me! That son of bitch wouldn't go out without firing everything he had on him,"_ Cid agreed.

" _It would still be wise to exercise caution, Tifa. Even if Barret is himself, Sephiroth might be able to manipulate him,"_ Nanaki warned.

Tifa pulled two cans of fruit from the cupboard, silently replying, _"With Cloud, I had no idea what was going on or what to expect. It's not like that now. I'll keep an eye on Barret, too. Maybe I can still help him."_

Although Cloud had nothing to add, Tifa could feel his discomfort. Whether Barret was dead, alive, or somewhere in between didn't matter to him. The prospect of watching an old friend crack the same way he had couldn't be anything but unsettling. Cloud's restrained disapproval prickled along the back of her neck like pins; to him, it was even worse that she'd chosen to take the same level of responsibility for Barret as she had for him. If she could truly read his mind, Tifa was almost positive she'd find a knotted heap of questions about how knowing most of what was going on was supposed to help when she had no practical solutions to the problem.

True, her resolve had lifted somewhat when Barret appeared, but Tifa couldn't help but share some of Cloud's concern. She was only making the same choice to watch over Barret because he was a friend; anything less was unconscionable. Even knowing or suspecting what she did about his mental malfunction, the best she could really do was to play it all by ear.

Maybe it would help to be a little more investigative this time? She'd too often caved into fear where Cloud was concerned. But sadly, she didn't have nearly as much—if anything—to lose this time. Being afraid of what she'd find would be nothing but a waste of time. Steeling her nerves, Tifa decided that now was the best time to broach the topic with Barret. Her situation was already too precarious without waiting to figure out what parts of Barret were broken or missing.

"Sorry I'm taking so long, Barret. I just got moved in, so nothing's where it should be. This used to be so much easier with Marlene around. She was a great help…I really miss her," she apologized, faltering slightly when she forced herself to bring up Marlene.

Barret lifted his head, stretching his arms and yawning, "No problem, Tifa. Your cooking's always been worth waiting. Marlene a good friend of yours?"

Tifa grimaced and bit back on a stinging urge to burst into tears right then and there, swallowing the lump in her throat. Staying casual was killing her already! Of all the people and places he could have forgotten, she'd never have guessed that Marlene would be one of them. She was such a pivotal, significant part of who Barret was! She was his drive for anything and everything he ever did. At times, she'd been his reason to keep living at all—the reason why he didn't wind up like his old friend, Dyne.

"Yeah, we were really close. She was a lot younger than me, but she made a wonderful little sister. People mistook her for my daughter, but she never corrected them…Actually, she was the adopted daughter of another very good friend. I'm surprised that you don't remember her," Tifa managed, pushing herself to turn around and look Barret in the eye. "She was around all the time."

"Kinda funny I don't, but we was up against ShinRa back then. They was some crazy times, Tifa," Barret excused.

She nodded, and paused to focus on selecting a few spices to throw in with the fruit she'd opened. Dinner was going to be very, very light, but having just occupied the place, a makeshift spicy fruit salad would pass. "I remember that, too," Tifa agreed. "We always had to be sure we knew what we were fighting for. We never knew when ShinRa might catch us, or when the casualties would feel like too many. I struggled with that for a long time, once the Planet was safe. From them, anyway…"

When she set Barret's bowl in front of him, he was staring into space, so deeply lost in thought, like there was something he just couldn't piece together, but the key to it was just barely out of his reach. He squinted his eyes, and a soft, perturbed groan rumbled in his throat.

"Barret?" Tifa tried, but he only shook his head slightly, trapped in his stupor.

Cautiously, she sat down adjacent to him, and took a bite of her meal. The fruit tasted somewhat like the can it had come from, but it was definitely better than pet food or garbage. Tifa picked at it slowly, hoping Barret would come to and say something.

After several long, dragged-out minutes, Barret finally shook off his trance and dug into his dinner. He ate ravenously, as if it was the first thing he'd tasted in ages. When done with shoveling the chunks into his mouth, he picked up the bowl and slurped up every drop of juice left. Then, at last, wiping his mouth clean with his good hand, he grumbled, "I ain't supposed to be here, am I?"

Tifa loosely hugged herself, casting her eyes down to stare at her knees. "I don't know, Barret. What happened to you?"

"Heh…Seems like I remember dying. And then there was a long time, jes' waiting and forgetting about life. Kinda like bein' in a prison or hospital. Real boring. Nothin' to do but wait until you're told what to do," Barret revealed.

" _Tifa, be on your guard,"_ Genesis abruptly cut in.

"Seems like?" Tifa asked, her stomach instantly dropping with Genesis' warning.

"Yeah, I was real weak, all covered in some kinda black shit. Then, there was the waiting…Can't say how I got here, though." Slowly, Barret lifted his head. "This—this ain't me. Can't be…I ain't me, Tifa!"

Suddenly, Barret jumped to his feet, staring with bewilderment at his gun arm. His nostrils flared as he began to hyperventilate, and his eyes wildly flickered back and forth between his weapon and her until finally, he took aim.

"Barret," Tifa numbly pronounced, rising and backing away from the table, "I know none of this makes sense. I'm kind of lost, too. Why don't we just talk a little more? We can try to figure it out together, right?"

"Sorry Teef. Just doin' what I gotta do," he panted, and popped off a few sloppily aimed shots. "I gotta do what I been told to do, cause you got the last ones…"

Throwing herself to the floor to avoid Barret's attack, Tifa heard the bullets penetrate the cupboards behind her, shattering the dishes inside. Before her, Barret hefted the table up with his good arm and tossed it aside, depriving her of its meager cover. The only way she was going to make it out of this alive was if she could at least disarm him before he had the chance to shoot again.

But then, awkwardly, Barret stomped toward her, raising and lowering his gun. Confusion and frustration played across his face, and Tifa wondered if, among so many other things, he'd also forgotten how to control his prosthesis. Pointing it at her wasn't a problem, but how to make it fire when he wanted it to was completely lost on him.

She chose that instant to jump. Her right arm quickly made contact with Barret's thick neck, hooking around it, and she used her full weight to send him tumbling to the floor. As he fell, Tifa moved out of his path just in time to see that there wasn't enough room. The back of his head smacked against the stone wall, resounding with a sickening crunch upon impact, knocking him out cold.

Fresh, dark blood had splattered and was already dribbling down the wall, forming a pool below his head in a gory halo. Tifa covered her mouth and willed herself not to react until she got a closer look. Kneeling down beside him, she carefully lifted his head. Fluid still rushed out of the back of his skull as though someone was pouring it from a bucket. The substance was not blood at all, but the tell-tale black pus of Geostigma. Looking over her shoulder when she heard something rustle, Tifa saw that his whole body was slowly melting away into the dark, infectious sludge.

" _He was just broken memories, being used,"_ Aerith murmured.

" _Like a Jenova copy, but not,"_ Zack added his rough assessment.

Tifa shook off her friends' voices. Memories? Copies? What was any of that really supposed to mean? There was no making sense of this! Why did he act like he had to kill her, and what did he mean when he said she had the last ones? The last ones of what?

Before she could overwhelm herself with questions, the front door crashed open, and four black-clad Cluster police men filed in. Tifa stood at attention, and started to plead for their help, but it was no use. One of them restrained her arms, while another wasted no time taking samples from Barret's body. The other two picked through the house, recording notes into electronic devices on their wrists. Frightened, Palylio slithered out of his hiding place in search for a better one, but one of the officers quickly collected the animal.

Too much. She'd made too much noise, acted too suspiciously, and too many people were dying around her. Even here in the slums, it all eventually had to get a little too creepy for the neighbors to stomach. Barret's gunfire had probably been the last straw for someone to make the call, along with the sudden, overnight destruction of her shanty house. Genesis had been right. People had noticed her, and not for the better.

The officer behind her gave her a light shove, and she cooperatively marched toward the door. Upon exiting, Tifa gawked at the sheer number of Cluster authorities waiting outside. They acted like they'd been expecting some very serious resistance from her, and it wasn't immediately obvious why.

But then, casting side-long glance at her old home, she saw what had earned her so much commotion: The same black ichor that Barret had bled was bubbling up from the ground around a now-dismantled scrap pile. They'd discovered Vaniir and Neyli.


	4. Trial and Error

**Chapter Three: Trial and Error**

Her prison cell was probably the most sterile place Tifa had slept since she'd crashed into this world. Aside from the obligatory latrine, the entire floor was covered in a soft, white padding, allowing her to sprawl out and relax wherever she pleased. What did it say of her, that she'd slept so soundly and dreamlessly in a place like this? Maybe nothing, or maybe that she was exhausted. She hadn't been mistreated. If anything, her captors seemed to take a small amount of pity on her.

Upon their arrival to this place, which she guessed was some kind of judiciary center, the Cluster police had assigned her fresh uniform clothes, escorted her to a showering room, and waited patiently for her to bathe, making no demands that she should hurry. Then, they'd inquired what kinds of food she could tolerate, and fed her accordingly. After all of that, they'd simply led her up several stories to this plain cell, and told her to rest up for her pending trial.

They had offered neither interrogation, harassment, nor torture. Apparently, the Amyntasi Clusters were very humane when it came to handling the accused, if this was anything close to the norm. If her trial was at all similar, then perhaps there was hope. Maybe she could use this opportunity to be completely honest with them, warn them about Sephiroth, and finally, obtain some kind of meaningful, official asylum on this planet. It would be pretty ironic, and maybe even a little funny in hindsight, to have to say that getting arrested on suspicion of murder was what had truly started her on the path to regaining her dignity.

Yet, it was only a precious glimmer. Damning evidence surrounded her on all sides, and pointing to a strange, otherworldly force might come off as little more than a desperate, last-ditch effort to divert attention from herself. To them, it could just be something that would needlessly prolong the investigation and preserve her life, now that she thought about it. After all, the death penalty could very well exist here. Choosing to execute a person who appeared to trigger so many unusual, grisly deaths wasn't exactly something she'd call cruel, depending on the method—it was understandably preventative, if nothing else. Cluster 100 could very well choose to terminate her, if they concluded that she was the cause of Geostigma.

Tifa rolled over and glared at herself in the mirror that made up one of the cell's walls. The scariest part for her was that she couldn't say she was completely certain she hadn't somehow caused Geostigma to surface on Amyntas. Her friends had told her that neither she nor Minerva were carriers, but in the end, all that really amounted to was reassuring voices in her head. Even if they were still real people, that didn't mean they wouldn't tell her whatever she needed to hear to keep going, or that more likely, they were simply wrong. For instance, Yuffie had been infected when she was still alive. What if the Yuffie-presence in her mind wasn't really her friend, but a well-disguised manifestation of Sephiroth's will, still entrenched within her own?

" _Hey! I heard that!"_ Yuffie protested. _"It only got to me on the outside. I escaped, and you saw it, remember?"_

"Yes, Yuffie, I remember," Tifa whispered, rubbing her face into the cushioned floor. There was that one spark of clean spirit energy that had fled Yuffie's body, just after they'd fought in the W.R.O.'s underground lab. Dangers lurked everywhere, but to look to Yuffie—that was paranoid.

What had she gotten herself into this time? Someone was probably keeping tabs on her from the other side of the mirror, waiting to see what kind of ungodly, alien trick she might try to pull off. The worst they were going to catch her doing was talking to herself. Feeling self-conscious, Tifa decided not to poke at Yuffie anymore. Once that girl started yammering, there was sometimes no stopping her.

Yawning, she softly answered whoever might be watching, "Sorry to bore you. This place is pretty secure, and I really can't do any of those things. I know, hard to believe, right?"

As expected, she received no reply.

Their idea of a prisoner's uniform was odd, she mentally noted, sitting up to inspect its reflection. If the same outfit had been presented to her in any other situation, she would have assumed it was for some kind of ceremony or religious ritual. It was all white, and made of what felt like a soft cotton. The top hung loose off her arms and chest, and unless she separated the folds of cloth by hand or did a wide split, the pants hung down like a skirt. There were no identifying numbers or symbols anywhere on it.

" _Maybe it means 'innocent until proven guilty'?"_ Aerith suggested.

" _These people are equally flawed as humanity once was, including the propensity to obey their worst fears,"_ Genesis obstinately countered, _"I wouldn't count on it."_

" _Yeah, well, either way, we have to think of some way out of here,"_ Zack chimed in, sounding more than just a tad annoyed with Genesis.

Her friends kept on talking and talking and talking. Tifa knew they meant well. She understood that they were only trying to help, but one voice was always conveniently absent: Minerva. Their situation could readily go far south from here, yet the so-called "Goddess" had nothing to say. On the rare occasion she did want to get a point across, she used Genesis as her sounding board. Why couldn't she just speak up and let her know the details of her plans directly? They were only living in the same head!

Lying flat on her back, Tifa sent one loud, frustrated thought inward, _"Why doesn't she say anything to me?"_

Cloud, Zack, Aerith, Yuffie, Cid, and Nanaki all fell silent. For a very short while, Tifa remembered what it was like to have her mind to herself. She sorely missed it.

Then, Genesis ruined the moment, _"The same reason men don't share strategies with their chocobos or airships."_

" _What a line of bullshit!"_ Cid interrupted. _"I talked to my beauties all the time—"_

" _Normal, sane men,_ " Genesis elaborated.

For the first time since she'd agreed to help her, Tifa felt genuinely resentful toward her world's collective will. Was this some kind of twisted punishment for failing to save the Planet from Sephiroth a third time? She'd accepted Minerva's presence because she wanted to atone for all the bad calls she'd made with Eden, leading up to Sephiroth's resurrection and Gaia's physical demise. She was more than willing to take responsibility for returning what remained of her Planet to the heart of the cosmos. But one thing she wouldn't accept and didn't think she deserved was to be dehumanized; treated like a vessel in the most literal sense of the word, like a vehicle whose only purposes were to house and transport its owner.

She had thoughts, feelings, and memories of her own, damn it!

" _And to the Goddess they all return when your time has waned,"_ Genesis added. _"What we are is but an expression of life's imagination, of her being. All that is born from the Lifestream returns to it. You know this."_

"Forget I asked," Tifa quietly snapped.

Graciously, Genesis and the others complied.

Tifa remembered how, long ago, the cycle of life was something precious; something fragile that required their fierce protection and tender care. Even she had gone too far in that ideal, and helped AVALANCHE blow up Mako Reactor One, back in Midgar. Many, many unsuspecting people died for the Planet. If it was to protect the cycle of life, along with satisfying a personal grudge or two, anything could be justified. Cid had once compared the Planet to a scared, defenseless little kid, floating in the vastness of space. For the longest time, she figured that was why Weapon had indiscriminately attacked humanity when Sephiroth summoned Meteor. Yet, in fighting so earnestly, even when they'd all resolved to stop being terrorists, she'd forgotten—maybe they all had—that the very same cycle could sometimes be incredibly cruel.

Minerva, the will of the Planet, cared very little for individuals—Genesis and Aerith were exceptions. All it cared for was its own well-being, and its continued ability to give and take away, so that it could give and take away, again and again. Then, at last, the cycle would cease and it would return to the Promised Land, which would follow the same pattern forevermore. Perhaps a better reason for wanting to maintain the cycle so smoothly back then should have been because of how much suffering the Planet itself could bring to pass when the Jenovas, ShinRas, and Sephiroths of the universe tried to hijack it.

So, that was it. All they were ever doing was pacifying an angry, childish, temperamental Goddess. How was that really so much different from what she feared the most now? The sanctity of a single life was just make-believe; it was nothing but—

" _Tifa,"_ Cloud suddenly intoned her name, _"Prison might not be the best place to mull things like that over."_

"Probably not," she answered him aloud, casting aside any worries for who might be listening.

Now that she thought about it, there was one thing about her cell that seemed designed to torment: It was maddeningly boring. There was absolutely nothing to do but sleep, defecate, and wait. There were no books or magazines, no games or puzzles, nothing to draw or write with, and no devices to receive broadcasts of any type. The whole set-up seemed like it was constructed with the intent of inducing stir-craziness. And just before a trail, no less, when she was pretty sure anyone would be biting their lips or nails with anxiety to begin with! "Humane" was no longer a fitting word to describe her conditions. This was more like the treatment a barely cared-for pet might receive. The keepers had long ago lost interest, but to soothe their guilty consciences, they still made sure the poor creature was fed, bathed on a rare occasion, and had some fresh shavings in a clean cage to sleep on. Affection or toys, on the other hand, were a luxury of the past.

If this was the case, Tifa didn't want to know what the Amyntasi Clusters did to people they actually deemed guilty of a crime.

As if to answer her, the lock on the steel door clicked, and the exit slid open with a hiss. Two men wearing black police uniforms entered and wordlessly motioned for her to stand.

Tifa complied, and they bound her hands in front of her. Leaving the cell, they marched down a long, narrow hallway, and into a small, ornate, round antechamber. A gaudy maroon carpet cut through the center, leading to a much larger exit veiled in a thick, black curtain. On the walls, a mural had been painted, depicting tall columns of stone set in the midst of an unsettled ocean, each topped off with some kind of glass dome. Tifa tilted her head slightly at the subtle reminder of how very alien this world still was to her. She'd only had the chance to experience a couple of limited-means examples of daily life on Amyntas. Aside from her initial journey to city, and the rare escapade just outside the Cluster, she'd never done much in the way of exploration. For the most part, this world's history, landmarks, and basic geography were still a mystery to her.

Moving on, she attempted to step through to the next room, but one of the guards stopped her with a sharp, formal warning, "Wait until we pull the drapes. You are to meet with the Cluster's highest council of judges. Show due respect."

Wordlessly, Tifa nodded. She squeezed her hands together, feeling the apprehension building in the pit of her stomach and in the back of her throat. Come to think of it, she also knew next to nothing about this world's higher etiquette or customs. For all she knew, remaining calm and collected before the council might come across as a sign of total lunacy, given the severity of the situation. There was simply no way of knowing.

* * *

After a long, restless hour, one of the guards received a message through the same communicative wrist device Tifa had seen them use at her arrest. It was her turn. Procedurally, they loosened her handcuffs and held back the curtains for her to continue through.

Taking small, reluctant steps, Tifa crept into the next room, a grand chamber befitting a court session. The floor was made of some kind of polished black marble, and the walls were filled with huge, arched windows. Glancing out, she confirmed her suspicion that she'd been imprisoned on the highest tier—the elevator up had taken quite a while. Finally, before her, there were four elevated tables, each seating three of the judges.

A few of them regarded her with thoughtful curiosity, but most just cast sour, unimpressed glares down their noses. The latter had probably already made up their minds, Tifa considered. Lowering her eyes to the floor, she continued her procession to the far end of the chamber until she reached a small chair, set directly in front of the judges' tables. Sitting down, she waited to hear what they would first say.

And waited, fidgeting, until—

"Tifa Lockhart, you must know the charges against you. Do you not intend to refute them? Or shall we simply agree to acknowledge your guilt, and move on to sentencing?" an old, gray, balding man seated at the center of the second table spat.

Her breath hitched, and she clenched her teeth. This trial wasn't looking to be fair. Exactly how was she supposed to know the charges against her, if no one had ever bothered to explain them?

Nevertheless, she answered, "All I know is that I've been caught in the middle of some awful things. I even get how bad that has to look, I do. I'm an outsider. I don't know how this world works, and that makes it easy for everyone to be suspicious of me. I probably would be too, if I were in your place. But…I haven't killed anyone."

To her left, a gentle-faced, middle-aged woman softly cleared her throat, while the right side of the room rose and departed in a perfectly straight line. "Those are the members of the court who would have judged you under your own admission of guilt. We remaining six will determine the veracity of your claims henceforth."

"Thank you, ma'am," Tifa muttered. At least someone was willing to give her a clue.

"Of course. Now that you understand, we may proceed. Your words sound sincere and heartfelt, yet we are left with two rather obvious dilemmas. First and foremost, you agree that you are not from Amyntas, correct?"

"Yeah."

A younger woman, also on the left table, leaned forward, clasping her hands. "As you may or may not know, the inhabitants of our world, Amyntas, are its children. Our planet has raised us. While we live, we commune with it, and execute its will. When we die, we return to the soul of our world, nourishing it with the knowledge and wisdom we have acquired in life. You agree that none of those statements hold true for you, so enlighten us: Where are you from?"

Inside, Aerith jumped. _"Tifa, these people really are Cetra! This world's Cetra are still alive!"_

Tifa closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. If they really were Cetra in the same manner as Aerith's ancestors, maybe they'd be more likely to believe her than she'd first ascertained. She could only hope. "My world has been destroyed," she announced, a small tremble creeping into her voice. Repeating that simple fact was never pleasant. "It's gone now…In the end, all I could do was run."

The balding man who'd first addressed her snorted, rolling his eyes. He'd looked upon her with nothing but pure disdain from the moment she'd entered the chamber, and he was all too eager to make it clear his opinion hadn't changed. "Precisely _how_ was your world laid to waste, and whatever possessed you to choose Amyntas for refuge?" he snarled, making Tifa flinch.

Where could she even start to answer him? With Sephiroth's birth? With Jenova's arrival on Gaia? With Eden's appearance, when she'd become the most intimately involved with the whole debacle? Or maybe with one of the two times Cloud had defeated Sephiroth before, to highlight the recurring nature of the danger possibly on its way?

"I—My world was visited thousands of years ago by a malicious creature. The people at that time—the Ancients—who were just like you, had to fight this thing. Most of them died before they were able to contain it. Then, people from my time unearthed and released it, thinking it was one of the Ancients. They tried to use it to create super-soldiers, but—"

"Wait, wait, you and the 'Ancients' were two separate peoples?" the balding judge interrupted. "Then, I have to assume you're trying to tell us that your people weren't originally from your world? No such thing as home for you and yours, right? This just keeps getting more and more convoluted, don't you think?"

"We weren't the same, but as far as I know, we all came from the same place," Tifa pushed back, trying so, so hard not to snap. This man was clearly not interested in anything she had to say. He just wanted his chance to berate her before passing his ill-informed judgment. "But those scientists succeeded, and one of those men couldn't handle learning how he'd been created. He decided he was supposed to be better than human, and tried to become some kind of 'god' by taking control of the Planet…and after a while, after a few tries," Tifa stuttered slightly, and blinked hard.

Rehashing even the most basic version of what had happened made her hate the sound of her own voice. If she hadn't been there to witness the whole ordeal for herself; if she hadn't been stuck right in the middle of it, what she was trying to convey to the court would have sounded rather contrived, even to her. The old male judge was being unnecessarily confrontational, but if they couldn't believe everything, she almost couldn't blame them.

"Please continue, Tifa. 'After a while—'?" the middle-aged woman coaxed her.

"He almost did it, or maybe he did…I don't know," Tifa rambled before concluding, "but he destroyed my Planet. A man named Sephiroth ended my world, and with everything that's happened, I think he might come here next."

Farthest to the right in the group of remaining judges, a younger man paused in his furious note-taking, frowning. He rose and emerged from behind his table, approaching to speak with her face- to- face. Standing before her, he kept his arms crossed, sizing her up.

"I'm deeply sorry for your loss," he sympathetically began. "It's incomparable to any other."

Tifa lost it. She hadn't felt it coming, and it was embarrassing, but a deluge of tears flooded her face, and she buried her face in the palms of her hands. This was the very first time that anyone with real authority had not only recognized her for what she was, but had also at least come close to expressing an honest belief in her account.

"The stress of learning to survive such a thing must be overwhelming," he continued.

"Yes," Tifa squeaked, still trying to rein in her emotions.

"There are probably times when you try to pretend that nothing like that ever happened. The evidence, as we know it, goes so far as to suggest that you've attempted to live somewhat normally among us for a full year now, and in that attempt, subjected yourself to some of the worst squalor that Amyntas has to offer. For that, I apologize." The young judge paused, and then turned to face the others, raising his voice, "But there are still some disturbing facts that make no sense to us. There is a second dilemma, as my colleague had mentioned: Literally every single soul in this world who has ingratiated his or herself with you has died a grotesque, merciless death. That includes the family of three who initially took you in, Tifa."

Stepping aside, he activated a small device in his right hand. A series of holographic images of Mirnu, Sailyo, and Laiyon appeared before Tifa. Nothing was left of them but corpses, fully consumed in the dark rashes and sludge of Geostigma.

She couldn't speak. What was there left to say? How could she ever prove that she didn't do this? Tifa stared in shock, shaking her head. "…too terrible," she finally uttered.

"Indeed. What you may not know is that these souls, for whatever reason, have been unable to rejoin with Amyntas. Instead, they cling to whatever fears or resentments they held in life. Somehow, your name is always spoken amongst them," he finished and stalked back to his place behind the tables.

There was no mercy left. Even the patient, middle-aged woman shot daggers at her, her lips pursed in sheer disgust before she read out the details of the deaths, "The little girl's name was Laiyon, as you should know. She literally melted to death before presumably passing the illness on to her parents. She perished only a few estimated days after you departed. The parents met with a similar demise, just three days ago."

"Sephiroth is—"Tifa tried, but the court wasn't hearing it anymore.

"If such a threat existed, wouldn't it have made more sense to warn us immediately? Instead, you concealed the deaths around you; you ran from them," the balding judge growled. "You've displayed behavior typical of a heinous murderer bent on committing further crimes!"

"I couldn't be sure, until Neyli and Vaniir—"

"Until you buried them beneath your shanty, at which point you conveniently took up residence in their home," the younger female judge finished. "I must admit, the story you tell is fascinating, Tifa Lockhart, but not because it exonerates you. Our world was also visited by a plague-bringing entity two and a half millennia ago. Our ancestors warded her off, but looking at their records of the incident, I have to say that their invader acted quite similarly to what we're seeing in you. She pretended to be one of our own before infecting her victims."

"You can't be serious," Tifa plead, sucking in even breaths to keep from panicking.

Were they honestly saying that she was just like Jenova in their eyes? Yet they ignored her, looking instead to two veiled judges at the table who hadn't spoken the whole time.

"We cannot determine her nature, but her culpability is without question," the first one determined.

"She should perish naturally in the Candlesticks, where Amyntas may receive her as a sacrifice," the other judged.

"You have to look into this a little more!" Tifa begged. "If I'm so dangerous, then why are all of you still standing? What about the police that brought me here, and the guards? Go ahead and keep me locked up if you have to, but don't do this. At least then I can try help you when Sephiroth arrives!"

The sound of her own voice sounded foreign and strained. Adrenaline pumped through her body, and her heart raced. Tifa knew she was in real trouble now. She had to try to make a break for it. But as she sprung to her feet, two guards immediately flanked her, restraining her arms from making another move. Until this very moment, she'd taken pride in the fact that she'd never had to fight one of the Amyntasi. Now she wished she had, because then she'd at least have been prepared for how strong they were.

Then, a sharp stab in her right arm alerted her to a needle forcing its way into her skin, drugging her with what she quickly found out was a strong sedative. She didn't even get the chance to try to struggle against their vice-grip hold. Her limbs were suddenly transformed into lead weights by how they felt, and her head swam with the urge to pass out.

As Tifa succumbed to the injection, the balding judge proclaimed, "Even if this 'Sephiroth' character should materialize, Amyntas will defeat him, blessed in all strength by the Place of Origin, the Universal Source."


	5. Human Sacrifice

**Chapter Four: Human Sacrifice**

Blinding streaks of ceiling light passed overhead, one by one. Voices surrounded her, murmuring to one another; nebulous, blurry words poured from faces she couldn't quite see. Wheels scraped along a rough, unkempt floor beneath her, jarring her back. When she strained slightly against her restraints, her body felt stiff and tired, and her eyes burned with the lull of artificial sleep.

Through her drugged stupor, Tifa tried to focus. She remembered that the Amyntasi guards had taken custody of her after her trial had concluded, sedating her before she had the chance to run or fight. And also before she could make a meaningful plea for the court's mercy when they decided to execute her.

Amyntas reminded her so much of Gaia, but in all the wrong ways. There were a few good people; a few wise or kind, but most of them would sooner kill off a disturbing messenger than face up to the fact that their world was in danger. They were a cowardly bunch, just like most of the world that had relied on ShinRa. Most, even at the very top, were only interested in maintaining their comfortable status quo, too hasty to settle for a false solution that would allow them the temporal luxury of looking the other way.

And now, as they carted Tifa away from the court room, down some unknown passage on the upper tier, she found a sick sort of comfort in their familiar, stubborn naïveté. The feeling was so wrong, and maybe even somewhat consenting to their deadly ideas about her, but it was a little like home. Once, long ago, ShinRa had needed someone to blame as well. Weapons were on the rampage, and Meteor had only been a week out from crashing down. A scapegoat offered a lot of mortified people a much –desired distraction in the face of all-certain death.

But then, she had escaped the death penalty before. Maybe it wasn't impossible to pull it off again. Tifa relaxed her stiffened neck, and let herself dose off slightly.

Somewhere along the way, she'd entered an elevator. The sinking, descending pull of gravity stretched on into a lengthy, indeterminate period of time. Like a proper prison or dungeon, the place the judges had termed "Candlesticks" was probably at ground level or lower, she figured. That might be a good sign; unlike Junon's gas chamber, this place probably wouldn't test her with a potentially fatal leap off an oversized cannon raised hundreds of feet above the ocean. Undoubtedly, Candlesticks would have its own special challenges, but it was pointless to try to guess what they might be.

A morbid conclusion Tifa had drawn was that she simply wasn't destined to die—to suffer, yes—but death seemed deeply disinterested in her. So long as she was present to witness its methodic, violent assault on her sanity, her life was safe. If only she could turn its indifference against it; make it bored with its own purpose.

Wishful thinking was always nice, wasn't it?

They had moved on to some kind of bustling tunnel now, and the guards were loading her into a vehicle. So this was where the Amyntasi kept their major transit systems! If they truly were Cetra, Tifa imagined that keeping it all underground made some kind of sense. Whatever waste these machines and passages produced was strictly isolated, prevented from impacting any of the wildlife above. Aside from the slums, with how clean the air seemed in most locations, they probably also had some means of scrubbing the vapors that escaped to the surface.

Tifa stifled a well-earned chuckle. Here she was, theoretically on the way to her execution, and she'd finally made some time for a bit of that overdue sight-seeing after all!

"Candlesticks, pier seven," one of the guards muttered to the driver.

"Seven? What the hell did she do?" the driver exclaimed.

"Classified and under review. All we know is she's a high risk."

Trying to roll her eyes at her captors' gross misjudgment, Tifa found that they were rather comfortable to stay there, closed and nestled within her head. At the moment, fighting the sedative's effects was meaningless. No matter what they personally thought of her, it was obvious that these people were just doing their jobs.

A few minutes passed. Or maybe it was a half the day. Either way, her guards suddenly wanted her awake again. They were shoving and poking at her, trying to get her to move.

"Y'know, you could try talking…I use words too," she slurred, but they ignored her suggestion. She was a known alien now, and they were pulling out all the stops to treat her exactly that way.

Groggily, Tifa dragged her legs over the stretcher's edge and stood, bracing herself against it to keep from falling down.

Only one guard remained with her, while the other had wandered off…somewhere. In her stupefied, drugged haze, Tifa didn't really know. Staring at the tunnel's wall was growing strangely engaging until, impatiently, he snatched up one of her hands, and then the other, cuffing them together. He then motioned for her to head for the tunnel's exit, genuinely intent on not sharing so much as two words with her.

Tifa had to wonder if he'd been instructed to remain silent, or if he was doing so out of his own personal disgust or fear. Not that it mattered at this point, but she couldn't help but entertain the thought that perhaps, this was how most of the Amyntasi had seen her from the very start. She didn't have such difficulties surviving in the slums for a lack of know-how. Reliable allies had just been too hard to come by most of the time.

In the cold clarity of hindsight, they'd been impossible to find at all.

Stumbling ahead as steadily as she could manage, Tifa's mouth dropped slightly ajar when she saw what loomed before her. It was just like that mural she'd seen on the upper tier, on the antechamber's walls. Far out at sea, stone towers rivaling the height of sky-scrapers jutted out of the water, bearing what looked like oversized fish bowls at their peaks.

This was Amyntas' death row, although they had yet to reveal exactly how they intended to kill her. Tifa had to give them credit: They sure knew how to paint certain doom in a glorious light. Back on Gaia, not even ShinRa's most lavish properties before Meteorfall could have compared to this kind of architectural engineering.

Peeling her gaze from the ocean, Tifa looked down the dock. Ahead, toward the very end, there was a small row of boats. An elderly woman stood there, waiting with a small bowl in her hands.

Catching up to her, Tifa's guard grabbed her by her right arm and ushered her the rest of the way, until she stood before the old woman.

"This is our sacrifice?" she inquired.

"From Cluster 100, a murderer in exchange for our continuing endurance. She is like the trespasser from long past," he explained, adopting a sanctimonious carriage that Tifa could tell was just a ridiculous act for this part of his duty.

The old woman grimaced. "So it may be, but she is yet weak. We are safe. She will die easily." Dipping her fingers into the dish, she drew a circle on Tifa's forehead with her pointer finger.

Thick and black, the substance ran down into Tifa's eyes. In this macabre ceremony, they'd marked her with fluids they'd collected from those they'd presumed to be her victims. She wasn't worried about becoming ill with Geostigma—if Sephiroth had intended his stigma for her in that way, all her previous exposures would have been more than enough to bring her down. Let them do whatever they pleased. Her greatest concern, she decided, was simply to observe everything and stay awake. Hopefully, with enough precursory observation, she'd be able to find a way out.

After that, the guard quickly herded her into one of the boats, and fired up its motor. Racing out to sea, they passed one tower after another. Soon, the shoreline was barely visible, and only one more remained, straight ahead.

Pulling up to its base, the boat slowed, circling it until it stopped at a small entrance to the tower's interior. It was nothing more than that, Tifa noted—there wasn't a door or barricade, just a hole. If all these people planned to do was take her to the top and hope she'd just die, they were sorely mistaken. Yes, they'd come a long way out to sea, but not more than a mile or so. She could swim the distance back to shore, barring any rip tides, overwhelmingly large waves, or predatory sea creatures.

All of which she had no clue, but that was just a chance she'd have to take.

Cooperatively, Tifa stepped out of the boat before her guard saw fit to push, shove, jab, or kick her again. Inside, she found the expected spiral stairwell, along with a small diagram of the tower's interior on the wall, engraved into a metal placard. Her heart sank. If she was reading it correctly, there were ten locking checkpoints on the way up. If she had her full strength, this would have been the exact moment at which she'd stopped playing along with whatever the Amyntasi- Cetran Cluster government wanted to do with her. She would have throttled the guard, and then taken the boat back to shore, preferably somewhere far removed from Cluster 100's territory.

No wonder they'd so heavily sedated her.

At this rate, she had no choice but to move on, and hope the top offered some kind of respite.

* * *

Tifa panted and leaned hard against the one final gateway to her supposed execution. The way up had been almost as long and twice as trying as the ShinRa building. Or maybe she was just out of shape? It had been a long, poorly-fed year since she'd done any real exercise or fighting.

Unsympathetic, her guard forced her to stand up straight, grabbing at the link in her handcuffs and painfully straining her shoulders. Loosening the lock, he freed her hands before giving her one last boot into the space ahead.

Falling down on her hands and knees, Tifa heard the gate slam shut, followed by the guard's quickly fading footfalls back down. Like a countdown, each checkpoint locked down as well until her entrapment was completed. There was nothing left to do but wait for the sedative to wear the rest of the way off, and then investigate. Albeit, she was too anxious to do the former. She wasn't about to bet her life on a place like this being safe to nap in. Crawling up a ramp-like incline, Tifa dragged herself out into the open.

At the very top of her assigned tower, Tifa gasped. She was inside one of the glass enclosures she'd observed on the way. Outside, the surrounding ocean was placid and still. The view beyond that was incredible. At this height, she could see past the other towers to the shoreline, where the boat that had brought here her was quickly approaching. Only somewhat distant, Cluster 100 stood tall and proud on the horizon. From behind her, the beginning of sunset illuminated its graduated tiers, while the rising of Amyntas' largest moon provided the city a nocturnal crown.

A small, half-laughed hiccup bounced from inside Tifa's throat. Why did beauty and horror have to be such fond bedfellows? She was privileged to be here, absorbing the sights of an alien world—a world with breath-taking cities and nature; its own eclectic mix of people, animals, and technology. She really was. No one part of it had ever quite prepared her for what she might encounter next. Yet, through her distractive musings, the latter half of her situation, the horror, in the form of an itchy smear on her forehead, reminded her of why she was here.

From what she could see, there was only one way out, through a small balcony on the furthest edge of the tower from the sealed entrance below. Leaping from this height into the water promised instant death to anyone who'd dare to try it. The tower itself contained literally nothing. There was neither food nor water. Aside from an overhanging ledge near the entrance, there was no roof, and no way to control the temperature. She was completely deprived of sustenance, and exposed to the elements. To top it off, there was no toilet, and no way to bathe. Just sitting around and waiting for nothing to happen would grow unsanitary very quickly.

This place, the Candlesticks, was made to force prisoners to choose how they'd perish. Here, she could die of dehydration, succumb to illness or exposure, or commit suicide before it became too unbearable. All the while, they'd called her a sacrifice—a sacrifice to their planet, Amyntas. Hers was a sentence meant to objectify and humiliate. The judges couldn't make heads or tails of what she was, or what her real intentions were, so they drew the worst conclusion possible, allowing them to issue the harshest sentence in their arsenal. By sending her here, they could flaunt their control over a being they vaguely suspected of being the same as Jenova.

" _These guys don't care who they have to kill, so long as they get to act like their planet is safe,"_ Cloud agreed.

Tifa looked down at the clothes she'd been issued, this time with both understanding and astonishment. They appeared sacramental because they were. Her trial had probably been a farce; a show she had to put on before the judges issued their already-decided upon verdict. If their relationship with their world was based upon feeding it new knowledge and wisdom through the life cycle, then what better treat for it than an alien sacrifice? What tastier morsel than one who knew of things having nothing to do with this isolated sphere? Even here, there was no exception to the cruelty of life.

Cetra or no, the Amyntasi were not justified, holy keepers of their planet, Tifa decided. They were barbaric cowards.

" _Tifa, I don't know what to say. I'm sorry,"_ Aerith's voice murmured from the back of her mind.

In all of what had been Aerith's short life, Tifa had never heard her sound so guilty, so contrite. She was probably shocked. How gut-wrenching it must feel, to find out long after her natural life that her ancestors might have been just as crooked as normal human beings. What a dark revelation it had to be for her, that being born from the Planet had made them neither sacred nor particularly righteous.

But she couldn't bring herself to answer her old friend's apology, because of what they were soon to share in common. Tifa had been so confident that she'd find some way to slip out of this trap, but as the sedative's effects grew weaker and weaker, the more clearly she could see that no such thing existed. Like Aerith, she was to die atop a Cetran altar.

" _The Goddess will intervene when your death is immediately imminent. No sooner,"_ Genesis supplied.

Tifa perked up, enlivened with a morbid, tricky thought. If that's all she had to do to force Minerva's hand, then, "Just watch me!"

Shutting her eyes and clenching her back teeth, Tifa broke into a full sprint for the balcony. She could do this. She could take control; show Gaia's disembodied soul that she wasn't just a convenient shelter or mode of transport. She was still her own person, and if all she had to do was hold herself hostage, from here on out, she'd be the one calling the shots.

Then, a sharp peal of thunder nearly knocked her back, halting her only precious inches from the edge.

Her heart throbbed in her ears, and she watched the dust and pebbles she'd kicked up in her run take the plunge she had not. Far below, where they fell and disappeared, the waters had grown severely agitated. Waves crashed and sloshed at the base, and leapt into the lower entrance, probably flooding it. Looking up, Tifa beheld low-hanging clouds rapidly gathering out of nowhere, spinning directly overhead. Bolts of crimson and violet reached out from their center, like an electrified spider crawling through a small hole.

The rim of the tower's glass walls caught one of the lightning strikes and sparked to life, buzzing with a fresh, live charge. Startled, Tifa booked back beneath the meager shelter of the awning near the final checkpoint. She'd lived long enough on this world to have seen a few rough storms. None of them had ever looked or acted like this, but with how the tower was reacting—

" _Might be Amyntas, tryin' to eat yer ass up, just like they want,"_ Cid commented.

Outside, rain began splattering hard on the stone floor, and water surged down the ramp to where she was hiding.

Tifa pressed her back against the bars, eyeing the shape-shifting clouds. Black and misty, they dipped and receded like searching fingers, assaulting the platform above with water and blasts of wind.

She'd seen this before, hadn't she? Black doomsday clouds, risen from a world utterly consumed in rot; corrupted souls heeding the call of their new master. Tifa hissed through her teeth, trying to calm her nerves enough to think coherently.

"No, that's not possible, Tifa," she corrected herself. "Amyntas isn't that sick yet. Not like that."

Her friends fell eerily silent at that statement, and her head felt suddenly heavy. Buzzing static overloaded her ears. Someone was trying to say something; someone was trying to push through. Tifa listened closely, but it was like trying to pick out a single voice from a million whispers.

Then, as quickly as they'd come, both the torrents of rain and the psychic static ceased. Trembling slightly, Tifa crept back up to the tower's roof. When she emerged, a massive, roaring, super-sonic explosion sounded from above, rolling the clouds back as though they were only plumes of dust. Crimson light poured down through the center of the storm, coloring the surrounding cumulonimbi in its deep hue. As it reflected off the raging sea, all the world was bleeding.

Still, Tifa dared to step further out. There was nowhere else to go, and nothing she could do to make her situation any safer. She was already drenched; hiding to stay dry was pointless.

As if in response to her boldness, the storm's winds died down. The ocean settled, turning into one huge, bloody mirror that seamlessly melded with the sky further out.

Then, from the shore, a series of sirens howled out their warning.

Tifa did an about face. From Cluster 100 and other populous locations further inland, bright columns of white magical energy burst upward and out, pushing back against the spreading darkness.

"That's…Holy," she said to herself, unable to tear her eyes from the spectacle unfolding in the sky above.

But that meant whatever had brought this tempest about had nothing to do with Amyntas accepting its peoples' sacrifice. What could an impressive, collective summoning of Holy magic like this mean? Frozen in place, Tifa continued to watch, pacing back slightly while it collided with the clouds, engaging in a full-fledged struggle. Both forces surged and retreated, again and again, neither making significant headway.

Another thunderous blast roared directly above, emitting a shockwave which, when it met with Holy, repelled it on every side. Slowly, the summon fell apart. Magnificent, fluid white power faded into corroded, weak, bluish wisps and dissipated, leaving only a tingly, electro-static charge in the air to indicate it had been cast at all.

Tifa swallowed hard and forced her eyes to peer up into the heart of the storm. There, she saw a perfect, black orb of spirit energy, melded together like an oversized materia, hovering within the opening. A golden ring of light surrounded it lengthwise, giving the illusion of an eclipse. As she observed the anomaly, her temples began to burn. She tried to pick up her feet, but they wouldn't respond. Frantic, she searched inward for her friends, hoping they had anything to say, but she could barely feel their presence. It was as though they'd all fled into the smallest corner of her mind, and they weren't making a peep.

No one said a word. The oceans and winds were still, and the shores had darkened. The world had fallen silent.

Blinking only once, Tifa almost missed seeing the dark sphere peel itself apart. Someone was coming down, and she didn't even have to question who. He was descending like shooting star with terrific speed, his hair and coat trailing behind him, coming closer, even while she begged for it to be anyone and everything else.

He crushed her denial in milliseconds, crashing through the glass wall.

Tifa finally forced her legs to jump back, but for all the speed of her reflexes, she was still too slow.

His sword pierced her chest just beneath her heart, and exited through the center of her back.

This was it. Her life was over. She was going to die here, and he would move on, ever victorious in his world-consuming conquest.

Slowly, agonizingly, he retracted the blade, and Tifa fell to her knees. She coughed hard, and blood splattered from her mouth. Trying to inhale, the most horrific, deep pain greeted her efforts. Eyes wet, she looked up just in time to see him lift her from her spot on the ground by one hand. Suspended upright, Tifa felt her life's blood fleeing the wound from both her front and back.

Sephiroth leered at her, just as he had so many years ago in Nibelheim, smirking in joyous fury for the prey he'd caught. Only this time, she'd angered him far, far worse. She'd nurtured his child-self in Eden, and then stolen away the one part of the Planet that would have truly completed his ascension. The breach in her mind reopened, and Tifa felt it—how _betrayed_ he actually felt when she did that, and how now, he burned with divine rage, intermingled with a sinister fascination for how she'd even accomplished such a feat.

Drawing her closer, until his lips nearly touched her ear, he quietly challenged her, "We both know this can't destroy you, Tifa. Show me what you truly are."

Tifa made a weak effort to shake her head—no, there was nothing left for him to see; nothing new for him to take from her but her already-fading life. But then, she started hacking again, uncontrollably. The flesh that Sephiroth had run through spontaneously started knitting back together; her ribs and lungs rejoining the broken parts that were killing her. A tremendous surge of energy flared to life within her, and every inch of her body was ablaze in terrific pain.

Dropping her on the spot, Sephiroth kept watch, his eyes continuing to bore through her while she struggled for her life.

Whatever was happening to her felt like using a summon materia, but instead of expending just a portion of mental energy, this was threatening to divide her in two! Streaks of light poured from her body until the sheer force of it threw her back several feet. On her back, she heaved for the oxygen the now-healed wound had deprived her of, while a few wisps of straggling life energy escaped her.

Coalescing together, and now looking very much like the Lifestream she'd once known, the strands and sparks took the form of Minerva. Standing between her and Sephiroth, the Goddess was fully clad for battle.

Low and dark, Sephiroth laughed and flapped his wing once to gain a small amount of altitude. "Oh? A generous offering, Tifa, but what shall I call the one who can wield the soul of a world?"

Violently shaking, Tifa couldn't bring herself to speak. Her lungs and throat were too rough, still healing from the massive damage he'd inflicted.

Then, it began. Minerva vaulted after Sephiroth, preparing her massive arrow.

Sephiroth blinked once, acknowledging the challenge, and raised his sword.

In one fluid motion, the Goddess released the string of her armor-fashioned bow, sending the arrow hurtling toward him.

For several long seconds, Sephiroth didn't budge.

Tifa's heart raced sickeningly fast. Was he really just going to let it end, right here and now? Just like that? What if all he'd wanted was one last opportunity to torment her for taking what he thought was rightfully his?

No. Of course not. His goal was ever the same.

At the very last instant, with a single, sweeping slash, he cut the arrow in two, cleaving through its center. The diverted halves passed harmlessly on either side of his head, and in another swift turn, he did exactly the same to Minerva's material form.

An unintelligible cry leapt from the back of Tifa's throat, and she reached out for the strands of life energy rapidly bleeding from the once-again defeated Goddess, willing them to return to her.

Shockingly, they obeyed, retreating into her body until she was left alone with Sephiroth yet again.

"When my journey is complete, I will meld with all worlds, and take my rightful place in Promised Land. Even this planet, overconfident in its stature and age, shall become one with me," Sephiroth coolly reiterated, raising one hand heaven-ward.

Mountains of rock and earth came pouring down from the skies at his unspoken command, gouging and wounding Amyntas in every direction Tifa looked. One of them piled over Cluster 100, crushing and burying it, wiping it from the face of its planet.

She couldn't stay. Tifa couldn't bear watching another world be torn apart at the hands of this man. Cold, formless spirit energy still radiated around her, and she recalled her narrow escape from Gaia. Pulling the Goddess' power in, clinging to it, she pictured the safety she'd found in that crystalline materia shell.

Heeding her wishes, the energy solidified around her into that same egg-shaped pod, and levitated slowly upward.

At the moment, Sephiroth did not seem intent on pursuing her, too busy laying the world to waste.

Still, she continued to watch while the huge planet of Amyntas struggled in vain against him. Eight huge beasts—presumably this world's Weapons—emerged from the sea and began stalking toward him. Their fall was swift and decisive. The same piles of debris that had ruined Cluster 100 fell over them, dragging them back into the depths. At last, bright, fluid tendrils of Lifestream erupted from all around the planet. Defeated and resisting no more, they flowed together into a colossal airborne river, feeding into Sephiroth. Soon, he would command an even greater power than if he'd been completely successful in taking Gaia.

Gaia had fought so much harder than this, time and again. A large, old planet like Amyntas should have been able to turn the tide, but instead- "Why," Tifa wept, leaning her forehead against the wall of her shell. "Why couldn't you at least hear me out? I didn't want this to happen again."

Speeding into space, she saw the remains of a dead world, crumbling and falling into the much larger one below. Even though it should have been impossible without the Goddess, Sephiroth had used Gaia's remains to overpower Amyntas. Somehow, he'd found a way to hold the empty husk of a world together.

Tifa curled up and closed her tired, tired eyes. Behind her lids, she could still see Sephiroth, holding her gaze fast while he drank in Amyntas' life. That old, vulnerably open feeling at the forefront of her consciousness had indeed returned. In forcing her mind open to preserve her sanity, and to an extent, to control her, Minerva had erred greatly. Now, all Sephiroth had to do to regain his foothold was walk through an open door.

Drifting, Tifa was startled when, rather than mocking her, he merely reassured her, _"We will meet again, when you are ready to follow. Rest well, Tifa."_

Tifa shook her head. She'd go mad before she'd willingly partake of his conquest.

But then again, if she honestly counted the cost, she already controlled nothing—not even herself.

Wishful thinking was always nice, wasn't it?


	6. Choices

**Chapter Five: Choices**

"Where…?" Tifa uttered.

The last thing she recalled was floating, numb and hopeless through the blackness of space, in and out of a restless sleep. Now, a vast plain of multicolored flowers and grasses stretched out endlessly before her as if everything she'd just endured had been nothing but a bad dream. Their fronds and blades tickled and pricked at her bare feet and legs as she took a few cautious steps forward. A mild, comfortable breeze swept unkempt strands of her hair out of her face, neither humid nor too cold. Ahead, maybe a few miles off into the distance, falls of clear, clean water poured through what appeared to be slits in the fabric of an early morning or late evening sky, nourishing the garden-scape below. Above all else, directly overhead, a massive vortex of spirit energy swirled and churned with the clouds in hues of blue, indigo, and emerald, occasionally converging together to form huge, luminescent spheres at its core, and ejecting them into space through an upward funnel.

In the corner of one eye, a fleck of green, glistening light distracted Tifa from the spectacle above. Turning to find its source, she watched in awe as a patch of flowers all bloomed together in a single instant, each releasing tiny tendrils and sparks of life. They floated up like heatwaves from a hot road, donating themselves to the spinning mass overhead.

"Do you remember the Gold Saucer, Tifa?"

"Aerith?" She perked up to see her friend standing off to her right, hands clasped behind her back.

"Come to think of it, it wasn't that long ago, was it? So much fighting, but we still had a little fun, didn't we?" Aerith continued.

Tifa frowned. True, it had only been six years, but, "That feels like another lifetime."

"Well, for most of us, it was," Aerith softly laughed, pacing from her spot, "but that's okay."

"I don't think so," Tifa countered, feeling her heart sink.

"It has to be, though, doesn't it?" she insisted, and a small, exasperated sigh later, "Before the Planet called me to pray for Holy, I had a dream. My mother brought me here, too. You could say…this is where everything begins and ends."

"The Promised Land;" Tifa concluded, "the actual place where planet are born, and return to when they die."

Aerith nodded once. "For the souls of whole worlds, yeah. Seeing this place made it easier back then. It no longer mattered what happened to me once I got to the Forgotten City."

"Then, maybe it's almost time for me to go as well," Tifa guessed. Melancholic, she hoped.

Tight-lipped, Aerith closed her eyes and shook her head. "It's not quite…like that anymore, Tifa. Things have changed with you, and with Minerva. I don't know what it means. It's just…different. You're different."

Tifa threaded a finger through the hole in her sacrificial Amyntasi prisoner's shirt, touching the skin where Sephiroth had run her through—the smooth, scar-free spot that should have been home to a fatal injury. "You can say that again," she quietly confessed.

Aerith sat down on her left hip and stretched her legs out in the flowers. "Even this place is different now. It used to dream only of the birth and re-creation of the stars, but now, it's breathing, thinking—like a living consciousness, slowly waking up. Maybe it hears the cries out there…"

Clenching her hands into tight balls, Tifa forced herself to ask, "Is Sephiroth capable of taking it over?"

Head bowed, Aerith paused long before answering. Perhaps she was listening, praying that the heart of the universe would give her the answers they both so desperately needed.

But then, droplets of dew rolled off the petals of a gradated violet flower beneath her, evaporating into streaks of new life before it could hit the ground. Whether from the falls, the process of blooming, or the eyes of a Cetran ghost, the garden used it all the same.

"I don't know. I can't tell," she finally admitted, rising to her feet and brushing the loose foliage from her dress, and the moisture from her eyes. "But at least you're free now."

"That's not exactly the word I'd use," Tifa answered tersely. She was once again fleeing the man for whom she'd unwittingly become an object of fierce obsession. There was no freedom in that.

Clasping her hands together in front of her, Aerith managed a weak smile. "Still, what Genesis said about you being Minerva's vessel is no longer true, Tifa. After what happened on Amyntas, she didn't have the strength to regroup. You called her back, though, and she dissolved…into you."

Startled, Tifa checked herself. Always somewhere, if she looked hard enough within, she could find the Goddess' quiet but imposing presence. Like this place, she was always dreaming or planning—or usually, trying for all she was worth to gather her strength. But search as she might, the corners of her mind and depths of her soul were devoid of Minerva's presence. In her place remained only a sense of heaviness that differed somehow from the emotional burden of having watched her friends and world after world die. It was like a longing or a hunger; an aspect of herself or a power yet untapped. Yes, there was some kind of power there—something difficult not to inspect just a little more, to reach out and claim—

"Let her rest," Aerith admonished, seeming to catch on to what she'd discovered. "It's better if you pretend what's left of her isn't even there. If you don't, one might not be enough. You'll seek out and take more without even knowing it—at least, not at first."

"One?"

"One planet," Aerith clarified.

With that bleak pronouncement, the waterfalls' rushing ceased as if they'd heard, and Tifa looked back behind her to see what had stopped them. Instead of the calming, low-light shades of dusk or dawn, the sky had turned pitch-black, illuminated only by far-off pin points of starlight. Taking a startled step backwards, the flowers that had brimmed with and birthed life only seconds ago crunched, brown, decayed, and dry under her feet.

Mouth agape in horror, Tifa jumped when a small, familiar hand suddenly grabbed one of hers.

Marlene.

"Tifa, it's time to wake up!" the girl shouted joyously.

Above, the vortex of lifestream was collapsing and burning up at is core. Flaming comets streaked across the night, pummeling it further into self-destructive submission.

Frantically, Tifa looked in every direction for Aerith, but her friend had vanished.

An insistent tug at her entrapped palm drew her attention back down to Marlene. Marlene, who like Barret, should not be alive. Marlene, who even worse than her father, had not just become another Geostigma victim, but the very catalyst for Sephiroth's reunion.

"Wake up!" she yelled again and again, "Wake up! Wake up!"

* * *

She came to splayed on the ground as if she'd passed out. Cold raindrops splattered in her face and eyes while Tifa struggled to regain her bearings. Her head swam and throbbed, trying to piece together how and when she'd arrived here, on what appeared to be yet another life-supporting planet. Remaining flat on her back for exhaustion, she cast long, confused glances at her new surroundings. The heavenly vision of the Promised Land, and the terror of its sudden, violent destruction were just figments of her sleeping imagination, it seemed. Just her frightened mind trying to figure out what came next.

Aerith had been there—had revealed something important, or that had a sense of urgency, but Tifa couldn't quite recall. Maybe later, when she had the energy to handle it, she'd ask again.

There were too many details missing, she quickly decided. The patch of land she lay on bore no evidence of her touch-down, still flat and damp. Nearby trees also showed no signs of having been too close to her crash site, growing strong and tall in what looked like a naturally twisted pattern, strewn with half-wilted vines and coated with mushrooms and algae. Most curious of all, she couldn't locate a single broken shard of her materia craft.

Straining to summon what little reserves of strength she still had, Tifa sat up and shuddered. The ground weakly pulled at her back in response, protesting with a sloppy, sucking noise as it released. Her entire backside was wet and dripping with mud. Every joint in her hands, arms, and legs were stiff from laying for what must have been way too long in the swampy, cold mire. And she felt weighed down; heavy, as if her own weight had become foreign to her.

"How far did I go?" she croaked to herself. To feel so weak, she must have been gravity-deprived for quite a while. She might as well have swallowed a boulder.

Awareness of her physical state was creeping back in far too quickly for comfort. Achy, leaden muscles, an empty stomach sour with hunger, and a parched mouth joined in the complaints of the frosty, unyielding body that had greeted her upon waking. For the moment, she had nothing to help any of it but her own bare hands and the flimsy, torn clothes on her back.

If something hell-bent on an exotic, meaty meal dwelled in this wasteland, she would make for an easy hunt.

At this point, in part, Tifa couldn't help but believe that wouldn't be the worst way to go. Better to be lost in the jaws of a hungry animal on a remote planet than to face another unjust execution attempt, or to cross paths with Sephiroth again. Indeed, there was now something heart-wrenching about the idea of so much as meeting with a single member of another civilized race. It was something too strong and bitter to be mere sadness or fear, but too weak and desperate to resemble the fires of hatred.

Although her mind was content to sit and ponder how she might sooner perish, her body adamantly refused that path. One hand in front of the other, she pushed herself forward to crawl on all fours, clawing at handfuls of slurry and rotten leaves. Just up a slight hill a yard or two away was a large, old, dead tree. The ground would be dryer there. Tifa had no plans after reaching it—those would have to figure themselves out once she arrived, if only she could make it.

One belabored inch after another, she reached the base of the hill, and forced herself to rise on shaky, unprepared feet. Hobbling and stumbling forward, she made her way up, catching herself from falling every few steps until finally, she let herself collapse, panting against the trunk. As hoped, the earth here was not the same soupy mess she'd woken up in. But then, beneath her hands, something prickled and crawled. Tifa backed off with a start, but saw nothing but the brownish imprint of her palms in the layer of green and blue moss that coated the bark. Strangely enough, while she inspected it, she also felt as though some of her vigor had returned—enough to stand steady and unaided, while less than a minute ago, she'd barely been better off than an infant.

Maybe it was nothing but an adrenaline rush brought on by the assumption that she'd pressed her hands against a nest of alien insects, but something about it made her stomach sink.

Peering back down the hill, she noticed that a dried out, rotted path marked where she'd struggled her way up. She wasn't native to this world, though, she reasoned. Something as simple and normally benign as the oils in her skin might be like poison to some of the surrounding fauna. It was probably just a disagreement in chemistry, but oh, how perfectly it seemed to represent the last two years of her life! Everything she touched; every goal she reached for withered away just like that.

Here, that relationship with her environment had turned starkly literal.

* * *

The longer Tifa trudged onward, the more energized she became, but at the same time, hints of panic were beginning to set in. How far would she have to keep walking to escape this marshland? What could she eat or drink in this world's wilderness? Was there any intelligent life to be found, or was this planet completely untamed? And what was she supposed to do if it was, or rather, if she never found any evidence to the contrary? For all she knew or could guess, this world might host one of the universe's highest civilized populations. She'd just never know a thing about it if she was walking in circles, trapped inside wilds that could very well span for thousands of miles.

"Looks like I'm wishing for company after all," Tifa reflected.

As always, in spite of everything, and no matter how great and oppressive that "everything" was, the urge and instinct to survive held out, strong and true. Not that she honestly relished the thought of meeting any new peoples, but if it meant a meal, fresh clothes, and even a modicum of time to think on anything but how to save her skin, then maybe the risk was still worth it.

Sephiroth had mentioned that they'd only meet again when she was ready to follow him. _Willingly_. The idea that she'd comply with him in any state resembling sanity was ludicrous. Thus, Tifa dared to flirt with the idea that this meant she had nothing to fear here—nothing like what had happened with Gaia and Amyntas, at any rate. If she did run once again into civilization, people wouldn't fall left and right because he was stalking her. If Sephiroth was to be believed, then the only thing she really needed to be afraid of was how the next race might receive her. Ironically, she felt like she could believe him, because he was more the type to take pleasure in revealing his hand than in spinning webs of lies, knowing full well that no one could do much of a damn thing about it.

Abruptly jarring her from her inner negotiation, a hot, hissing breath blasted into her face. Pushing up through the cattails and reeds that concealed a deep, murky pool of water straight ahead, a huge, scaled beast resembling an alligator or crocodile had crept up on her. It loomed over her, staring her down with its mouth half ajar in a reptilian, razor-toothed, pseudo-grin. With a head the size of her whole frame, it could probably snap her up in one bite if it wanted to; if it was angry or hungry enough.

Tifa froze in place, returning the monster's icy, ravenous glare. No matter how she sized the thing up, this was looking to be an unfair fight. She was completely unarmed and unprotected. Her prediction that she'd get eaten alive seemed on the verge of fulfillment. With such a formidable enemy, and in these circumstances, "hopeless" was the first word that came to mind.

" _But you know better than that, Tifa,"_ Cloud reminded her, and memories of the some of the larger beasts they'd fought back home flared to life.

She...did know better, didn't she? It had just been too long. The only big and significantly dexterous ones back on Gaia were birds or other flyers. A creature this immense could indeed probably kill whatever it wanted to with a single bite or swing of its massive tail, but it was probably also just as impressively sluggish. Speed was definitely still on her side, whether she chose to turn and run or stay and fight. Running, she would escape this particular instance of danger, but would almost certainly collide head-long into another. If she fought and won, on the other hand, the monster's scales, bones, meat, and teeth were hers for the taking—food, weapons, and a makeshift shelter.

Even human beings were often most dangerous when hungry, tired, and scared. Tifa knew she was no different.

Leaping as high as she could against the pull of gravity, she lunged not for the crocodile's head, but for a sturdy, flat landing point on its back. Her feet met the rough, scaly surface with a thud and a small slip, burning their soles, but she ignored the pain. Reaching down, she latched onto a large, protruding scale, and throwing her full weight behind it, she ripped the hard, serrated chunk of flesh from its owner.

The monster growled and thrashed violently for its fresh injury, shaking its unwieldy head from side to side in a vain effort to shake or snap Tifa from its back. Its tail swept and flopped, but the vulnerable spot where she had chosen to launch her attack was completely out of the animal's range.

Determined, she sprinted up croc's back toward its head, scale in hand. Her feet were cut and bleeding, and the run was akin to trying to maintain balance on a narrow bridge during an earthquake, but she'd been through worse. Stars and planets, she'd been through so much worse! A little blood? She didn't care anymore. There was always more where that came from. Pain? No doubt she'd live to tell about it. But this monster would not. Kneeling atop the beast's head, she drove the pointed end of the scale through one of its eyes, piercing the membrane down to a layer of cartilage, scraping past bone, and burying it in brain. Unsatisfied, she allowed her hand to keep a hold of the makeshift dagger, her forearm following its grisly path into her foe to make sure it was embedded deeply enough to kill.

Moments and a final, exhausted growl later, the monster collapsed, and Tifa with it. Extracting her hand from the gore, she lay back and panted. How long had it been since she'd fought that hard? Maybe she hadn't atrophied and rusted quite as badly as she'd assumed.

Toward the monochrome, foggy sky, streaks of the crocodile's life energy spilled. For some reason, they did not drift away to rejoin their planet. Instead, they lingered, pooling together just over her reclined body, hesitant, as if in shock that this much smaller creature had actually managed to end their body's usefulness.

In idle curiosity, Tifa lifted a hand, stirring the airborne puddle. She wrapped some of its substance around her pointer finger, and the rest followed obediently, forming a small, glowing ball in her palm. It pulsated as she drew her hand back down to get an even closer look. Like a child who'd just caught her first lightning bug, she closed her other hand around it, and peered inside.

But it had vanished. Save for a slight glaze of translucent residue, the dark enclosure between her hands was completely empty. Soft, electro-static waves rolled up both of her arms in the wake of its disappearance, joining together at the base of her neck and traversing the length of her spine.

Tifa closed her eyes and looked inward, a storm of wonder and dread knotting in the pit of her stomach. There, three separate life energies swirled together, repeatedly meeting and dispersing. One, she instinctively knew had belonged to her since birth; her soul. Old memories that she once treasured called out to her; former happiness leaving bitterness in its stead. Nothing good ever lasted, and some things she once thought had been just were nothing but terrible and corrupt. There was no end to regret, was there? Sighing deeply, she turned her attention to the second, which was a disjointed mass of Holy magic, barely holding the frayed threads of a very ancient, powerful spirit together. It felt…very familiar. Finally, the last one was the sphere of light onto which she'd just clasped. Slowly, the orb unraveled into a straight, serpentine form. It weaved between the two others, binding them together, stretching itself longer and thinner to wrap around them again and again.

" _The Goddess vanquished, but a surrogate Omega is Omega still. Profaned, she now draws the strength and life of beings alien. And soon, the journey to rebirth may be forsaken for a celestial feast on the nectar of worlds,"_ Genesis' warning echoed from deep within her subconscious.

Tifa opened her eyes and sat upright. "Vanquished…?" she repeated, furrowing her brows. And then, "The Planet is completely dead? But it can't be if I still—can it?" The space between her eyes ached, and she knew she was trying to remember something.

Genesis had not been the first to warn her. She had heard something like it, just a little while ago, but in kinder, gentler terms.

Of course.

Aerith had said something similar in her dream, hadn't she? Sephiroth had destroyed Minerva, to the point where Gaia's conscious will had effectively become the spiritual equivalent of a vegetable. The lifestream that remained only did so because Tifa had called it back. Her body and mind, once only a vehicle destined to go wherever the Goddess deemed, was now simply the incidental carrier of a massive amount of spirit energy. Until now, it had seemed content to sleep within her, distinct from her own life force.

The plants, moss, and algae that had dried up with each step forward—none of it was the fault of incompatible extraterrestrial chemistry, she realized. Tifa couldn't believe how much she'd managed to ignore it, but how many times had the very ground beneath her bare feet cut, scraped, gouged, and stung her? How many clouds of angry, swarming insects had she numbly stumbled through, barely registering their bites? This place should have meant a sure, hastened death from exposure. Instead, she had become death to it. She should have been much hungrier, thirstier, and wounded beyond recognition, but the remains of Gaia's soul still nourished her as the one who housed it, however perversely. Not a single nick or scratch had failed to heal.

Tifa stared at her hands again, morbid curiosity working its way into disgust. What was happening to her? It was as though the substance of her being had transformed into some type of mini, organic Mako reactor. If she did ultimately meet with more intelligent life, would she have the same effect on them as she had with this place? Would proximity alone kill them?

Maybe not. Not every single thing she'd touched on the way had died. The insects, the larger trees—those remained. Tifa stopped herself, half-hyperventilating, before the temptation to completely lose it became too strong. That kind of thinking wouldn't help her right now. Failing all else, the beast beneath her had required her to take it down in a more traditional fashion, with a little quick thinking, moving, and brute strength. It hadn't just dropped dead at her feet either. Only once it actually lacked a pulse did its spirit energy seem to mistake her for its home. Perhaps she was only dangerous to smaller, completely non-sentient things?

Listening to the sound of her slow, deep breathing, she noted that aside from her own turmoil, her mind was devoid of the usual chatter she'd grown accustomed to. For the most part, with the exception of a few very short interludes, it had been ever since she'd departed from Amyntas. She could still feel them there, but Tifa wondered what kind of environment she'd become for her friends. Could she sustain their existence with her will alone, or would Gaia's remains soon draw them in as well?

….No wonder Sephiroth had let her go.

No wonder at all. He had to have known this was going to happen, and probably figured that she'd become so perturbed and lost within her new state of existence, she'd eventually seek him out if for no other reason than mere understanding. After all, he had consumed entire worlds _intentionally._ He had control over what he did and did not take.

And again, Tifa recalled what Aerith had said about being free. It was true, regardless of the circumstances, for she now had a choice. She could continue to act as Omega on its pilgrimage to the Promised Land. That was the unquestionably right and noble thing to do, wasn't it? It was the only good purpose she could truly hope to serve after what she'd allowed her world, friends, and family to suffer.

And the other option?

Tifa laughed at the absurd, horrible obviousness of it, angry that she hadn't caught onto it earlier. She'd never run into a more perfect definition of "rock bottom". What else could it be?

The alternative was that she could become Jenova.


End file.
